Being Sesshoumaru, Being Human
by chissprincess
Summary: When Sesshoumaru’s humanhatred goes too far, his punishment is to live as a human until he finds someone he would be willing to die for. Is that even possible? Can he love a human? SesshoumaruOC
1. Chapter 1

Hello, and welcome to the insanity that is my first ever published Inuyasha fanfic! I'm sure the idea has been done before (though I haven't read any fics like this), but I thought it would be a fun one to write anyway, so I did. Here it is for your reading pleasure.

**Summary:** When Sesshoumaru's human-hatred goes too far, his punishment is to live as a human until he finds someone he would be willing to die for. Is that even possible? Can he love a human? Sesshoumaru/OC

**Rating:** T, just to be safe. No graphic sex (actually, no sex at all so far), some violence, some swearing.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of it, except my OC. Also, I'm not making any money off of this, nor am I becoming massively internet famous, or anything like that.

**And a few more author notes:** If you've gotten this far, you should have read the rating and summary already. So, just remember...if there's something you don't like in the story, that's cool. But please don't complain to me because you don't like pairings with OC's or something, because...well...you knew that was there going in. Don't like it? Don't read it. Seriously. Also, I see no real point in flames, so please save yourself some time and don't flame me. Otherwise, enjoy. And don't forget that the authoress likes reviews :)

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**Chapter 1**

Sesshoumaru glared down at the dead human bodies before him and flicked a few stray drops of blood from his claws. Insects, all of them, every last person in the village. That's all they were. So far beneath his notice it was pathetic. So far beneath his notice that their crime against him wasn't worth his remembering or noting. This village, like so many others in the past few weeks, had paid for the crimes of its inhabitants with its total destruction. The attack had been swift and efficient, with not a single one of the disgusting creatures left standing. And now, with that annoying problem out of the way, he could continue on his way in peace.

Behind a nearby rock, the girl Rin and her guardian Jaken watched with wide eyes. Sesshoumaru didn't usually scare Rin or shock Jaken, but just now, he had managed to do both. Since coming to live with Sesshoumaru, Rin had managed to convince herself that the great inu daiyoukai was different from humans, and indeed different from other demons. But this…well, he had killed these humans and destroyed their village for no good reason. Did that make him no better than the lower demons? Than the bandits who had killed her family?

"Rin. Jaken." Those were the only words he had to say. They both leapt into action, scrambling from behind the rock and following after their lord and protector. But Rin was troubled. Time to approach Sesshoumaru.

"Um, Sesshoumaru-sama…" His golden eyes darted towards her, but he said nothing. "Rin was just wondering…why did you kill those humans?"

"Because they were in the way," he said simply. Why was she asking such silly questions now?

"But…Rin doesn't understand what they did…"

Sesshoumaru whirled on her, hand raised to strike. "Why are you questioning me?" he growled.

Rin let out a small scream and cowered, while Jaken leapt forward and brandished Nintoujou at Sesshoumaru. There weren't too many things that inspired Jaken to such extreme behavior. Sesshoumaru threatening to hit Rin was one of those things, seeing as Sesshoumaru was normally very even-tempered around the young girl.

"Rin just…Rin just thought…"

"Of course you did. You're one of them, after all," Sesshoumaru spat before turning away and continuing up the path. He didn't even bother looking over his shoulder to see if his minions were following. He knew they would. They didn't have much choice.

"Something is wrong with Sesshoumaru-sama," Jaken murmured.

"I know, Jaken-sama," Rin whispered back. "Sesshoumaru-sama scared me just now. Rin thought he was going to hit me."

Jaken nodded, then turned to follow Sesshoumaru. "Stay with me, Rin. He won't hurt you while I'm here."

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They finally settled into a small campsite just as it was about to get dark. Jaken made a fire, then he and Rin went to find some food. Rin spent the night in silence, and Jaken was reminded very vividly of her behavior when she had first started traveling with them. His eyes darted to Sesshoumaru, sitting as far from the fire as he could get without completely leaving the campsite, and he sighed. Sesshoumaru had always been haughty and proud and had always harbored a great hatred for humans, but lately…well, it was getting worse. "Oh, Inu no Taishou," he muttered as he disposed of the fish bones from the evening meal, "everything I've heard indicates that you were a great youkai in your day…Sesshoumaru-sama needs to change, or he won't have a chance to become as great as you." As if in response, a gentle breeze blew through their little campsite, but nothing else happened. Jaken sighed and returned to the fire, resigned to serving a Sesshoumaru who was getting more and more irrationally violent towards humans as the days went by. Something wasn't right. He just hoped that someone, somewhere, would know a way of setting things right again.

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Sesshoumaru glared at Jaken and Rin, huddled by there fire. Insolent creatures, both of them. Why couldn't Rin just accept his actions and move on? And for that matter, what was Jaken thinking, challenging him like that? There should have been no doubt in his mind as to which of them would win in an all-out fight. Jaken was useless without Nintoujou, and fortunately Sesshoumaru knew plenty of ways of defeating Nintoujou in a moment. Better for Jaken to learn his place. Sesshoumaru would have to have a little chat with him about appropriate behavior for a servant like him.

A gentle breeze blew through the clearing, and Sesshoumaru closed his eyes for just a moment to concentrate on the feeling of it on his skin. Even he had to admit that a breeze was nice every once in a while. He let his guard down for a moment, letting his mind wander…thoughts of his recent activities flooded in…images of Rin and Jaken following after him everywhere…his past…how he got where he was today…

His eyes snapped open, and he scanned the area before him. This wasn't the forest. Where was he? Where were Jaken and Rin? Before the young inuyoukai could even twist around to look behind him, the area before him lit up in a brilliant flash of light that, under normal circumstances, he would have assumed only the sun could achieve. Throwing his hands up to shield his eyes, Sesshoumaru growled at the light. "What is _this_?"

"An intervention," a dry and vaguely familiar man's voice said.

"And don't you dare pretend you don't need it," a second man's voice added.

"Really, Sesshoumaru, I raised you better than this." He knew that voice instantly. How had his father gotten here? Father was dead.

"Don't blame yourself, Inu no Taishou," a third man said. "Our sons don't always turn out at we envision them, especially when we die before having the chance to teach them everything."

"Gee, thanks for that vote of confidence," the first voice said. The speaker sounded peeved.

Sesshoumaru's eyes finally adjusted to the light, and he was able to get a good look at what he was dealing with. Ghosts -- he was dealing with a bunch of ghosts. There, in the middle of the group, was his father, looking sad and more than a little disappointed. Beside him sat the bat youkai Tsukuyomaru, a young youkai who had known Inu no Taishou better than he had known Sesshoumaru despite being closer in age to the great inu-daiyoukai's oldest son. Sesshoumaru was surprised to see him there, having not known that Tsukuyomaru had died. He had been silent so far. Another demon sat beside him -- Hoshiyomi, to whom the second voice of the evening belonged. Sesshoumaru could distinctly remember his father lobbying against Hoshiyomi's attempts to create a perfect anti-youkai weapon, not because he was against the weapon itself, but because he suspected that something that strong would be difficult if not impossible for Hoshiyomi to control. Inu no Taishou had been right on that count, and Sesshoumaru found himself a bit relieved that Hoshiyomi was showing no signs of having been possessed by his own weapon at the moment of his death. To his father's other side sat two youkai that, when alive, had been his enemies -- Menoumaru (the first speaker) and his father Hyouga (the third speaker). In death, Hyouga had returned to his pre-transformation appearance, and he shared an eerie resemblance with his only son. Both youkai were sitting calmly, one leg cross over the other, arms folded over their chests, staring at Sesshoumaru with almost-identical purple-blue eyes, their red antennae bobbing with every tiny head movement. If it hadn't been for Menoumaru's dangling gold earrings and his distinctly younger appearance, Sesshoumaru would have been hard-pressed to tell them apart. Ghosts didn't retain the scents they had had in life, after all.

"I'm fine," he said.

"Hardly," a new voice said. Sesshoumaru couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman who had spoken, and when he finally got a good look at the speaker, that didn't clear anything up either. The being had an incredibly androgynous body, with tanned skin and a mane of brilliant purple hair. Its eyes sparkled in the light, changing color with each small shift in angle and lighting. Whatever and whoever it was, Sesshoumaru had never seen it before. But it had its own smell, meaning it wasn't dead. What in the world…?

"This Sesshoumaru doesn't need a…a…what did you call it, Menoumaru?"

"An intervention," the delicate-looking youkai replied.

"Right. That."

"But you do, Sesshoumaru," his father said sadly. "I know you've never liked humans. You take after your mother in that. But really, do you have to kill entire villages full of them for no reason? Do you have to raise your hand to strike Rin just because she asks questions?"

"I've never threatened Rin, what are you talking about?" Sesshoumaru answered.

"Yes, you have. Just today," Tsukuyomaru said. He pointed at the purple-haired youkai, who obligingly waved a long-fingered hand and conjured an image out of the thin mists floating around them. Sesshoumaru's eyes widened as the image showed the events of the day, starting with his slaughter of the humans and ending just after he threatened to hit Rin and Jaken jumped between them.

Sesshoumaru snorted. "So what? That girl needs to learn her place."

"There are better ways to discipline a child," Tsukuyomaru said flatly. "Especially one like Rin."

Hoshiyomi leaned forward. "The fact is, look who's here telling you that there's something wrong: your father, a pair of youkai you barely knew, and two youkai who were your sworn enemies in life." The two Chinese moth youkai nodded, antennae bobbing in unison. The motion momentarily distracted everyone (especially Tsukuyomaru, whose eyes followed the synchronized motion in an almost trance-like state and who gave his head a small shake when it was over), then Hoshiyomi turned his attention back to Sesshoumaru. "The point is, Hyouga and Menoumaru over there had a hatred of humans to rival yours, and they never did anything like what you did today. Or for that matter, what you've been doing for months now."

Sesshoumaru snorted. "I tell them to obey me. They don't. I fix that situation. What seems to be the problem?"

Menoumaru turned to the purple-haired youkai. "Want to help me out, here?" The youkai nodded and went to stand before Menoumaru. Everyone watched in fascination as the green-haired youkai's spirit stood and merged with the very solid youkai before him. The freshly-possessed androgynous youkai turned, stalked towards Sesshoumaru, and gave him a sound smack across the face before stalking back to Menoumaru's seat. The dead youkai's spirit left its momentary vessel and returned to its seat. "Thanks," he said.

"No problem," the other being said, a serene look etched into its features.

"If you weren't already dead," Sesshoumaru growled, "this Sesshoumaru would have your head for that."

"This Menoumaru had to do _something_ to get your attention," Menoumaru countered. "You're even more of an idiot than I thought you were if you think your actions amount to simply fixing an obedience problem. You tell them to do something and give them what, a mere moment to carry out your orders? And then kill them if they don't comply? And seriously, when did you gain the right to order them around anyway? It's not like you control their lands or have earned their loyalty. You're slaughtering them, that's what you're doing. And today you raised your hand to Rin…"

"Sesshoumaru," his father said, "something needs to change. I was wary of you taking that girl in, but I thought she might have a good influence on you. Now I see you behaving like this, and it has me worried. As your father, I demand that you change your behavior. Or rather, I would, if I thought that would do anything."

"So just how do you expect me to change?" Sesshoumaru asked, raising an eyebrow. "I see no need to change, after all."

"Well I do, and I am your father, and though I may be dead you still owe me respect and deference," Inu no Taishou growled menacingly. "I have devised a punishment for you." He motioned to the purple-haired youkai who had been smiling quietly this whole time. "Will you explain, please?"

"Of course," it replied. "Sesshoumaru-sama, it has been decided that you must learn what it means to be human, so that you have a better idea what it is you're doing. Therefore, I have been called upon to use my powers to help you learn this lesson. The moment I give the signal, you will cease to be Sesshoumaru and will instead become a mere human. In that form, you will learn the lessons needed to truly understand what it is to be human. Ultimately, only one thing can restore you to your true form -- you must find something to protect. A human you can love and care for and give everything, even your life, to protect. Obviously, Rin doesn't fit that description yet. Oh, and don't worry a bit about her or Jaken -- they'll be well cared for in your absence."

"I'm sorry, Sesshoumaru. But this is truly the only way," his father said. Even Sesshoumaru, as confused as he was, had to admit that his father really did seem sorry.

"But…"

"No buts," Hyouga said. "You be a good son and listen to your father."

"It took a lot of work for us to arrange this," Tsukuyomaru added. "You should be grateful."

"He won't be, at least not until he learns his lesson," Hoshiyomi said. "Well, then, shall we go? The sooner he starts on this, the better."

The others nodded and began to fade away, all except for Inu no Taishou, who stood and approached his son. "Sesshoumaru," he whispered, "I'll be watching over you." And with that, he too was gone, leaving only the strange purple-haired youkai for company. Sesshoumaru turned to the youkai and raised an eyebrow. The youkai just smiled, raised a hand, and moments later everything went black for Sesshoumaru.

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Sesshoumaru let out a quiet groan as he opened his eyes, squinting against the bright sunlight. Good skies, what a weird dream. It was strange enough that he had actually fallen asleep, but to have a dream like that on top of it…intervention indeed. There was nothing wrong with him. There was nothing wrong with the way he treated humans. Bah.

He reach up with his right hand to rub his eyes, then sat up and propped himself up with his left hand. Wait, his left hand? Sesshoumaru blinked in confusion and looked down. Indeed, his left arm -- the one Inuyasha had severed during their fight over the Tessaiga -- had returned. Though, it seemed he had lost his clothing. Very odd. Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes at his left hand, then held his right hand up for a closer look. His claws were gone too, as were the magenta stripes on his wrists. For that matter…yes, a closer inspection of his own body quickly revealed that the stripes marking his ankles and hips were also gone. What in the world…

He pulled a handful of his long hair over his shoulder and stared at it. The normally silver-white hair had turned jet-black (though he was glad to see it was still as long and smooth as before). Ok, so, maybe that dream thing hadn't been a dream after all…

"Rin! Jaken!" Sesshoumaru winced at the sound of his voice. It was a bit higher than usual, and much less fearsome. No, people wouldn't be running away from him any time soon. And even if Rin and Jaken were in the area, they weren't likely to pay much attention to someone who sounded so un-Sesshoumaru-like. The inu-youkai-turned-human sniffed the air, realized that he couldn't smell much, and decided that humans were even more pathetic than he'd thought. Well. That might explain why they didn't bathe so much. But he wasn't about to make excuses. Staggering to his feet, Sesshoumaru made his way to the river nearby. It was a slow-moving river, perfect for swimming and bathing…and for seeing one's reflection, apparently. Sesshoumaru knelt beside the river and leaned forward to splash some of the water onto his face, but never made it that far. Instead, he stopped and stared at the face before him.

His facial structure hadn't changed much, he noticed. The blue crescent moon, magenta stripes, and red eye marks were completely gone, and his complexion was just a touch darker than it had been before. The eyes blinking back at him were no longer gold, but were instead a deep blue-grey. His ears had morphed from their usual narrow, pointy shape into the more rounded shape typical of humans. The whole thing was framed by long, smooth black hair. Sesshoumaru delicately ran his fingers over his new face, tracing the areas where his youkai marks had once been visible. But there was nothing there, now, nothing to set him apart from anyone else. It was a strange feeling.

He made quick work of bathing, then headed back to where he had woken up. It was a secluded place, so he would be able to sit and consider his situation and figure out a way to go about getting some clothes. Somehow, he doubted that walking around Japan with no clothes and none of his demon abilities would be a very smart idea. Fortunately, he didn't have to worry about that for too long, because upon returning to his original spot, he discovered a small pile of supplies. On top of the pile was a carefully rolled scroll, which he picked up, opened, and read.

_Sesshoumaru --_

_I know you probably won't believe a word of this, but it does pain me to do this to you. You must understand, though…you've gone quite overboard, even for a human-hating youkai. I do hope this experience will bring you to your senses quickly, and that you can return to your youkai form without much fuss. To help you, I've secured some human clothes for you, as well as a human sword. They are quite suitable for a young, itinerant warrior, which is your cover story. Your human name is Masuyo Watanabe -- don't forget it. Referring to yourself as "Sesshoumaru" won't get you anywhere. Oh, and I returned your missing arm. It's been taking up space in my skeleton all this time, and I imagine you can make more use of it than me. Try not to lose it again._

_-- Your father._

Sesshoumaru sighed, crumpled the letter, and tossed it aside, turning his attention to the clothes before him. Time to get dressed and wander a bit. At the very least, it would keep him from getting bored.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author notes: **Fresh chapter, in which we meet our heroine and some of the other characters as well. Oh, and in which Sesshoumaru causes some drama. Because, well, you would cause drama too if you suddenly found yourself in a situation like this. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and please leave me a review. I won't be able to post each day after this, but reviews will encourage me to post faster.

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**Chapter 2**

Kagome Higurashi gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and uncovered the word in the right column of the study sheet she had made for herself. "Yes!" she cheered, glad she had gotten another word right. This English was a tough language, and she was having a difficult time with the vocabulary. It didn't help her studying any when Inuyasha complained about her saying words and phrases he didn't understand, either. Even after knowing her for so long, he still didn't understand the concept of tests.

Three more words later, Kagome was finished with her vocabulary review. She sighed, stretched, and pushed back from her desk, turning to find Inuyasha poking at the contents of her backpack. "There's nothing interesting in there, you know. We took all the food out before coming back here."

"Ah, why'd you do that?" he whined. "I'm hungry, and I can't eat paper!" He waved a letter in a white envelope before her eyes.

Kagome took the letter and glanced at the envelope. Oh yes, _that_ letter. She had almost forgotten about it. "I have to go give this to Mama anyway, so I'll see if dinner is ready. Wait here." With that, she slipped from the room, headed down the stairs, and made her way into the kitchen.

"Oh, Kagome, are you finished studying?" her mother asked.

"Yes! Ooh, and dinner smells so good…Oh, Mama, this is for you, from my English teacher."

Kagome's mother stopped her cooking just long enough to take the letter and read it, trusting Kagome to watch over the food. Finally, she sighed. "Well, it's about all of your absences from school…but it can't be helped. You have your duties in both worlds, don't you?"

Kagome nodded. "I think she's suspicious, though…she said something about my crazy illnesses."

Her mother patted her shoulder and took over the last few minutes of cooking. "I wouldn't worry about it, Kagome. You're going to be in school for a while now, right? You explained about your exams to Inuyasha, and he's just going to have to accept it. Your teacher will be fine."

The teenager nodded, gathering the dinner plates to set the table. In her heart, though, she wasn't so sure that her English teacher would be so understanding. She had enough problems without worrying about delinquent students.

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Theresa Hyland sighed, eyes scanning her near-to-bursting classroom. Almost time for class to start…would Kagome Higurashi show up to school today? She hoped so, for the girl's sake. Kagome didn't seem to know it, but she was barely keeping her head above water in all of her school subjects. She couldn't afford to miss another day. Then again, missing a day of study in this classroom probably didn't hurt her chances of getting into a good high school that much.

Though she didn't like to admit it, Theresa too was just barely keeping her head above water. She had come to Tokyo in July as an assistant English teacher, and had been assigned a spot in this nice, quiet school working along side the elderly English teacher, Mr. Yamamoto. She had adored him -- he was a stern teacher, but he was also quite patient with his students and his slightly disoriented assistant. Unlike many of the teachers her peers in the foreigner community had been assigned to work with, Mr. Yamamoto encouraged Theresa to come to him with new ideas, and he was usually willing to try them out. They were supposed to have started a revamped English Club, but then Mr. Yamamoto had fallen ill early in September and had wound up in the hospital. Since then Theresa had been the only one in charge of the classroom while the school scrambled to find a replacement. Their search was going poorly, leaving the American assistant teacher in a very bad spot. Plus, her students were confused -- they treated her with respect, certainly, but they had treated her differently as a mere assistant than they had ever treated an actual teacher. Now, the assistant had become a temporary teacher. They had no idea what to make of her.

Her brown eyes narrowed at the sound of a new student entering the room, and she looked up just in time to see Kagome making her way to her desk in the middle of the room. Great. Maybe her letter to the girl's mother had actually done some good. The other teachers had thought letters would be a pointless waste of time, but Theresa figured it never hurt to try.

Class went reasonably well that day, though there was some struggling during the vocabulary drill. Once again, Theresa felt her confidence in herself and her skills as a teacher slip. She was failing these kids. Really, they didn't stand that much of a chance, having to rely on someone like her as their teacher. This wasn't supposed to be her job. But there was no other choice. Finally, class ended, the students left, and Theresa called Kagome to the front of the room.

"I'm glad to see you today," she said as the last of the students left the room. She could see the signs of motion outside the door indicating that students were busy moving between classrooms. "You spend an awful lot of time sick."

Kagome shrugged. "I'm feeling better now, Hyland-san."

Theresa raised an eyebrow. "You know, Kagome…you're a smart girl, and you could be doing so much better than this, if you just came to class more often. And I have to admit, I'm highly suspicious of some of these illnesses your grandfather keeps claiming you get. Last time you were out because of an aneurism, and the time before that it was meningitis. Those are very serious problems, you know -- not the kind of thing you recover from in a few days."

"Hehe," Kagome muttered rubbing the back of her neck. "Grandfather must have misunderstood the doctors…"

Theresa just stared at her for a moment, then gave a defeated sigh. "I know I'm not the best teacher, Kagome. I try, but it's hard for me. Success in school doesn't just depend on the teacher, though. Just…be more careful and try not to miss any more classes, alright?"

"Sure!" the teenager said cheerfully. "I'll see you tomorrow, Hyland-san!" And with that, she headed off to her next class, leaving Theresa to deal with a new group of students.

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Sesshoumaru glared down at the bowl of thin, nearly tasteless soup and the tough, leathery fish before him. One of the main disadvantages of being a human was that he had to eat regularly and often, something he discovered on his first day of being a human after nearly passing out from hunger. Too bad the village he currently called his temporary home lacked any good cooks, or the resources to find better food. Bah, this whole place was disgusting and dirty, the people incredibly unattractive, the work and the food so far beneath him as to be insulting. He was a daiyoukai, the oldest (and, as far as he was concerned, only legitimate) son of the great Inu no Taishou. He deserved better.

"Not hungry, Masuyo-san?" one of his dining companions asked. The man had a name, but Sesshoumaru couldn't be bothered to remember it.

"This Se-" he caught himself and coughed, "this sort of food is…beneath me," he said gravely. Something of the gravity he had hoped to achieve was lost, however, what with his voice not being as deep as it had been when he was a youkai.

The people around him fell quiet, though those farther away continued chatting amongst themselves. "What do you mean, it's beneath you?" another man asked.

"I mean, I deserve better than this," Sesshoumaru growled. "This food may be fit for the likes of you, but for someone like me to eat it…I wouldn't be surprised if the heavens opened up and swallowed us whole, that's how far removed from the proper order of the universe it would be for me to eat this."

Silence…followed almost instantly by raucous laughter. "My, my, such fancy words from someone like you!" the first man exclaimed. "You think you're some big prince or something? A great lord, maybe?"

"Where's your castle, little prince?" someone else shouted. "Where are your servants?"

"Maybe you can hire us some entertainment tonight!"

"Why bother with that, he's entertainment enough!"

Sesshoumaru pushed his food aside, stood, and drew his sword with a flourish, holding the tip so that it just touched the throat of his nearest heckler. "You dare speak

about me like this?" he hissed.

A snort. "Just who the hell do you think you are? We took you into this village out of the kindness of our hearts, and this is how you treat us? You don't even deserve to grovel at our feet, you filthy, ungrateful little vagabond."

"I'll teach you to speak to me that way!" Sesshoumaru shouted. Before anyone could even blink, the previously peaceful meal scene had turned into a violent brawl. Sesshoumaru got several good hits in, of course, but in the end none of that mattered. By nightfall he was once again homeless, looking for a warm place to sleep and plotting his path for the following day. Damn these pathetic humans…who did they think they were, treating him like this?

This went on for weeks until, one day, Sesshoumaru found himself in some vaguely familiar territory. He knew he hadn't come here often in his youkai form, but for some reason, he felt like he had been here before. His eyes darted around, studying the surrounding forest for something that would tell him exactly where he was, when he saw it -- the Sacred Tree. That was it. He had been here almost fifty years ago to see his then-sealed brother, Inuyasha. Things had changed since then, but the area was still very familiar. Well, if he was near the Tree, that meant he was near a village, didn't it? Sesshoumaru headed off in search of the village he seemed to remember was nearby, and it wasn't long before he found it. And whom should he encounter upon entering the village but the old woman called Kaede, younger sister of the priestess Kikyou. Just his luck.

"Welcome, stranger. What brings you to these parts?" Kaede asked.

Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes and looked around. This was one of the nicer villages he had seen. Much more welcoming of strangers, if Kaede's greeting was any indication. "I'm just a traveler," he finally said. "Searching for something I lost."

Kaede nodded gravely. "Can we help you find it?"

"Maybe," he replied. "Can I stay here for the night, at least?"

"Of course. I have room. Come on, then." With that, she turned and headed for her small hut, Sesshoumaru following close behind.

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Later that night, Kaede was woken up by…something. She wasn't at all sure what it was, though. Were there youkai about? She glanced over at her guest (what had he said his name was? Oh, right, Masuyo Watanabe). He was sound asleep, limbs spread every which way and snoring loudly enough to wake the dead -- no way would she be able to wake him up easily. Well, she was hardly a helpless old woman, she could investigate herself. Collecting her bow and arrows, she slipped quietly from the hut and went in search of the disturbance.

It wasn't long before Kaede stumbled upon it. It was a man, or at least, it looked like a man. But it glowed with an unearthly light she couldn't remember having ever seen before. Kaede narrowed her eyes at it. "What manner of creature are you?"

"My apologies, Lady Kaede. I would come to you in a…less bright form…but I'm afraid that's impossible. I'm a ghost. Specifically, I'm the ghost of the father of the young man sleeping in your hut."

"I see. Should I get him for you?"

He shook his head, making his long white ponytail sway. "There's no need for that. It's you I need to speak with. You see, I'm the ghost of a youkai. That young man in your hut is Sesshoumaru. You've heard the name, I take it?"

Kaede's one eye widened. "Inuyasha's older half-brother," she said.

"Right. Now, at the moment he's fairly harmless. You see…he went on something of a rampage not too long ago. It was bad, even by the standards of human-hating youkai. The last straw for me was when he raised his hand to strike Rin. That little girl has never done anything to harm him, she doesn't deserve his wrath. Being dead gives me all sorts of advantages, like the ability to discuss things with other dead youkai -- even former enemies or people I didn't know as well when I was alive. So, a group of us decided that Sesshoumaru needed to know more about what it's like to be a human…and lo and behold there's a way to turn him into a human. So that's what we did. He'll become a youkai again when he finds a human he cares about enough to potentially die for."

Kaede nodded slowly. "Why is he here?"

"Well, he needs some way of surviving in this world." Inu no Taishou sighed. "I hate to ask this of you, I truly do. But please, if you can, let him stay here. Teach him how to be a human. I wouldn't ask this, but we're desperate, and I know my other son thinks highly of you."

"He can stay," Kaede said. "I'll watch over him. But he can only stay at my discretion. If he acts up again, he must leave."

"Thank you, Kaede. Oh, and please don't tell him I was here, or that you know the truth. I think it would be better that way."


	3. Chapter 3

As promised, reviews make me write faster, so here's chapter 3. Unfortunately things got crazy for me in the past 24 hours, so this chapter wound up being a lot shorter than I had wanted. The next one should be longer, though. Anyway, major thanks to my reviewers, and a reminder that your authoress loves and is highly encouraged by fresh reviews. More reviews mean more chapters!

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**Chapter 3**

All had been well in Theresa Hyland's English classroom for almost a full month. The students seemed to understand the bad situation she was in and were making an effort to be helpful (or at least not difficult). They had been making surprisingly good progress in their language skills. This was especially true of Kagome, who hadn't missed a day of class since Theresa had spoken to her after school. Finally, the young assistant-turned-teacher had a reason to feel upbeat.

Then Kagome missed a day of class.

Theresa thought nothing of it. December had just begun and the weather had been unusually cold. Maybe there was something to all of Kagome's supposed illness…it was plausible that the extra-cold weather had hit the girl hard, and she was staying home because of that. A day or two and she would be back. But then Kagome missed a second day, and a third, and eventually an entire week went by without her even setting foot on school grounds. Theresa decided that this called for drastic measures -- a trip to the Higurashi shrine to chat with Kagome's family.

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She rapped sharply on the Higurashi family's front door, then turned to study the grounds of the shrine while she waited for someone to answer. Theresa had to admit, she was a little jealous of Kagome. To grow up in a place like this would have been amazing. Then again, outdoor playtime options had probably been somewhat restricted by the sacred nature of the place. But there was a park within walking distance…

The house door opened and a woman appeared. "Can I help you?"

"You must be Kagome's mother," Theresa said, turning and bowing to the woman. "I'm Theresa Hyland, her English teacher. Do you have a minute to talk?"

"Oh, yes. Please, come in." Mrs. Higurashi stepped aside and motioned the young American in. Theresa slipped off her shoes and placed them neatly by the door, then followed her student's mother into the dining room. She accepted the tea that was offered, and when they were both finally settled she took a deep breath and looked up at the woman before her.

"Mrs. Higurashi, it's about Kagome. I'm worried about her…she's missed so much school in the past year, and I'm afraid she won't do well on her high school entrance tests if she misses any more. Things were going really well this month. She hadn't missed a single day. But then she disappeared again, and now she's been gone for an entire week! Is she alright?"

"Well, she's as fine as can be expected, I suppose. She's very ill, you know."

"Yes, so I've heard," Theresa said. "You wouldn't mind if I paid her a visit, would you? I mean, I suppose a visit from a teacher isn't going to cheer anyone up all that much, but I am worried about her."

Mrs. Higurashi's eyes darted to the room's small window, then back to Theresa. "Well, the truth is, she's not here. We had to send her to a hospital in another city for treatment this time. The doctors here are baffled."

Theresa's eyes widened. "Oh, I see. Well, when you go see her, please tell her I was asking for her, and please tell her that we're all looking forward to her coming back."

"I will," Mrs. Higurashi said, giving the English teacher a grateful smile. The two finished their tea in peace, then Theresa left.

_Right, in a hospital in another city. Tokyo has the best hospitals in the country…something isn't right here_. She paused when she came to the old sacred tree and stared up at it as though challenging it to give her an answer. But the tree just stood there, leaves rustling in a slight breeze, offering nothing but shade. Theresa frowned and turned away, just in time to hear the sound of a door sliding open somewhere behind her. Without really thinking, she darted around the small fence enclosing the tree and huddled in the shadows, eyes roaming the area before her. Then she gasped. There, emerging from a small building across the shrine grounds, was Kagome. And she didn't look the least bit unhealthy either. Well, perhaps she looked a bit tired, like she had been running or doing heavy lifting…though the way her backpack bulged, Theresa figured that would more than explain the heavy lifting bit. So what had she been doing in that little shed? As soon as Kagome vanished behind the main part of the shrine (headed for the house, apparently), Theresa stood from her hiding place and ran to the shed, pushed the door open just enough to slip inside, and took a look around. At first glance, there was nothing of interest there. The shed appeared to be an old well house of some sort, for there, in the center of the room and down a short staircase from where Theresa stood, was a square well. The top was wide open, and there was nothing to stop anyone or anything from falling into the well. That certainly wasn't very safe.

Theresa studied the well and frowned. Was there something in it? Something other than water, that is? She could have sworn she saw a dim light shining within the well. The young woman made her way down the stair and slowly approached the well, leaning a bit over the edge to see what was within. Sure enough, there was something glowing in there, and it wasn't water. At least, it didn't look like water. Theresa leaned closer, closer, and then (without knowing what possessed her to do it) she stretched her hand deep into the well in an effort to reach whatever was glowing down there.

Her last thought as she tumbled head first into the well was that stretching like that had been incredibly stupid.


	4. Chapter 4

**Ok!** Now we're getting into the real action! Hope you enjoy this chapter, and don't forget to review. The authoress needs a steady diet of reviews to be happy and productive ;-).

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**Chapter 4**

Sesshoumaru pushed the heavy curtain over Kaede's door out of the way and staggered into the hut, depositing an armful of firewood against the door and let out a long groan before straightening up and rubbing his lower back. This whole lacking in strength thing was starting to get old. Humans were shockingly weak -- even relatively strong ones like Masuyo, Sesshoumaru's human form. Really, he couldn't decide which was worse, the loss of strength or the loss of his (former) killer youkai senses. He had lost count of the number of times people had been able to sneak up on him because he couldn't hear them or smell them in advance. It annoyed him. Actually, it more than annoyed him, considering that the last time someone had snuck up on him said person had a very sharp sword in his hands, and could have killed Sesshoumaru. For the first time, Sesshoumaru had actually feared for his own life.

"Thank you, Masuyo," Kaede said from across the hut, pulling him back to the present. He just nodded to her and turned to leave again. There were more chores to be done, and he wanted to finish before night fell. Wandering around in the middle the forest (Inuyasha's Forest, at that) was probably not a good idea on a cold, dark night at this time of year. As a youkai Sesshoumaru could have easily survived a snowy night outside without even a fire to ward of the cold. Now, though…well, Masuyo wasn't so hardy. Nor was Masuyo all that effective when fighting youkai, but it wasn't like Sesshoumaru had a choice. He had to keep living in this body until he found a way to break free. And like it or not, the last of his day's chores was venturing into the forest to weed out any youkai who had gotten too near since the previous evening. Time to get started. Sesshoumaru gathered his sword and headed out.

He had been wandering in the forest for just over an hour when he finally arrived at the Bone Eater's Well, having seen and heard nothing out of the ordinary. Sesshoumaru raked his free hand back through his hair and sighed (he did that a lot lately) and frowned at the Well. It just sat there, doing nothing, as usual. Sesshoumaru took one final glance around, then gave in to his desire to rest his aching body and have some time to himself. He walked over to the Well and settled down beside it, carefully leaning back and letting out a small hiss as his muscles protested their new position. He let his head fall back against the Well and closed his eyes, breathing deeply and doing his best to ignore the cold air around him.

His peaceful rest was rather abruptly interrupted by the sound of a loud thud from somewhere behind him, followed by a string of words he didn't know but that had the tone of distinctly wicked and very dirty curses. There was silence for a moment, then another curse, more silence, another curse…another loud thud, this time followed by what sounded like a wail. Sesshoumaru finally pushed himself away from the Well and looked around. There was nothing here…which meant that the sounds had to be coming from inside the Well. He stood and stared at the Well, took a step towards it, and was just about to carefully lean over the edge for a look inside when a small, pale hand appeared at the Well's edge, gripping the rim hard enough to turn the knuckles white. A second hand appeared, followed shortly by a head full of long brown hair and a pair of huge brown eyes, which at the moment were filled with determination as the person who owned them struggled to get over the edge of the well. Finally, with one last great surge of effort, the person scrambled over the edge of the Well and fell in a heap on the ground beside where Sesshoumaru had just been sitting. He studied the human for a moment, dark eyes taking in the strange clothes and unusual features. It was a woman -- that much he figured out almost instantly. But it was a much heavier woman than he was used to seeing. She was quite pale, and her features were different from anything he had seen before. She obviously wasn't a local, that much was certain, But then, where was she from? Kagome's time, perhaps -- this Well was, after all, how Kagome and Inuyasha managed to travel between time periods. But this woman and her clothes looked very different from Kagome and the things she wore. Perhaps they were from different times? Finally, the woman caught her breath and worked her way into a sitting position, leaning back against the Well. She raised her eyes and looked around, finally noticing Sesshoumaru. Her eyes started at his feet, traveling from there up his legs and torso to his face, and she gasped a bit.

"Please don't hurt me, I didn't do anything," she blurted.

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Theresa looked around and rubbed the back of her neck. How was it that she had fallen into that well and managed to not injure herself? Surely she should at least have some nasty bruises right now, maybe even a few broken bones…but there was nothing. It was like she hadn't fallen at all. But there was something wrong. The air around her was freezing, much colder than it had been when she had fallen. A quick glance up also revealed that, somehow, the shed sheltering the well had vanished, for Theresa could see the cloud-filled sky overhead. Okay. Time to find her way out of the well.

The sides of the well appeared to be covered in vines. Standing, Theresa looked around for the wall with the best footholds and thickest vine growth, then grabbed hold of some vines and attempted to haul herself up a bit. She had managed to get perhaps three feet up the wall when she lost her grip and fell back down, landing hard on her bottom. Unfortunately, the ground was uneven and rocky, and that made her fall rather painful. So painful, in fact, that she let out a string of foul language that would have embarrassed even the most foul-mouthed of people before climbing once more to her feet and gingerly rubbing her rear end. Throwing a glare at the vines and rocks that had failed to provide an easy way out of the well, she began her second attempt. Theresa made it quite a bit farther this time, nearly falling again when her foot slipped from the rock she had stepped on. That elicited another curse from her, but she continued struggling up the well's wall.

_Why, of why did I not work harder in gym class when we had to climb those stupid nets? And when we had to do chin-ups? Why couldn't I have put more effort into my strength training regimen before now?_

A second slip and cursing streak later, she had finally made it to the top. She grabbed the rim of the well with one hand, steadied herself, reached up with the second hand, and proceeded to haul, kick, and scramble her way over the edge, where she promptly collapsed on the ground in an exhausted heap. Theresa just lay there for a bit with her eyes closed, then finally decided that it was too cold to stay where she was and sat up to take a look around.

She very nearly regretted that. Theresa couldn't see a single thing that was familiar. In fact, she noticed that she seemed to have left the grounds of the Higurashi temple entirely and wound up in a forest, but she had no idea where this forest was or how she had gotten there. Perhaps she really _had_ injured herself when she fell into the well. Then she noticed that there was someone else nearby. Her eyes settled on the black-clad feet first, traveling up the hakama-covered legs to the person's torso (_what a marvelous shade of blue material that haori is made of_, she thought before focusing on more important things again), darting to the side just long enough to note the sheathed sword clutched in one hand, then continuing up to the most beautiful face Theresa had ever seen on anyone, man or woman. This was definitely a man, but wow…she could just stare at him all day and be quite happy. It was the eyes, she thought -- they were a deep, striking blue-grey, absolutely mesmerizing. Not so mesmerizing that she didn't notice his sword-filled hand twitch a bit, as though he was getting ready to use that sword (or so she figured, anyway -- Theresa was hardly an expert in the use of swords). Without even thinking, she said, "Please don't hurt me, I didn't do anything," then did her best to melt into the well wall behind her in the hopes of preventing the man from chopping her into little pieces…or whatever it was he planned on doing.

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Sesshoumaru snorted. _She honestly things I would waste my energy on doing anything to her?_ _There would be no point. If I want her to die, all I have to do is leave her out here…she doesn't look like she would last more than a day or two on her own._ He frowned and wrinkled his nose. _Why couldn't she at least be cute? Inuyasha got a cute girl out of the well. Annoying, yes, but still cute. Why do I have to be the one to find...find…what the hell should I even call her, anyway?_ He raked his eyes over her less-than-slender figure and sighed. There was no real choice, he supposed -- he had to take her to Kaede. Leaving her out here would hardly do anything for turning him back into a youkai, after all.

"Come with me," he said, turning away from her and taking a few steps in the general direction of the village. He glanced over his shoulder to see if she was following, and sighed when he saw her still huddled against the well. "You. Come with me, please. You can't stay here safely after dark."

Theresa scrambled to her feet and followed the man, staring at his back the whole way. He wore his hair long and loose, and she noticed it was considerably longer than hers -- almost to the ground, really. She was jealous. Her own hair didn't seem able to make it past her waist. But really, she had other things to worry about right now. Like, where they were going, and who this guy was.

"Where are we going?"

"To my village."

Okay, a nice, straightforward answer. Theresa could handle that. "Er…is it very far?"

He shrugged. "Not too far."

"Does it have a name?"

He glanced over his shoulder at her, an unreadable expression on his face. "We call it Kaede's village."

Theresa nodded. "How about you? Do _you_ have a name?"

Sesshoumaru sighed and closed his eyes. "Why do you have so many questions?"

"Gee, I don't know, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I fell _into_ a well in Tokyo and just climbed _out_ of what appears to be the same well in the middle of a place that definitely is _not_ Tokyo."

_What in the world is this "Tokyo" place? _Sesshoumaru thought. But he didn't say anything about that. Somehow, he sensed that any explanation would be more trouble than it was worth. "My name is Masuyo."

"Oh. I'm Theresa."

Sesshoumaru didn't answer. He just nodded, pondered how he was going to get his mouth around the strange name, and continued leading her towards the village. Theresa decided to give up on talking to her guide and instead turned her attention to following him closely and studying her surroundings. They arrived at the village much sooner than she had expected, but not soon enough to keep her from shivering uncontrollably. Her fingernails had long since turned blue, and it had begun to snow…damned snow. It was making her feet and the lower part of her pants wet, which just made her colder. This was miserable. Sesshoumaru (or Masuyo, as Theresa knew him) led her to Kaede's hut and held the curtain for her as she stepped inside, still shivering miserably.

"Oh, Masuyo, you're back. Who is this?"

Sesshoumaru nodded to Kaede. "This is…er…"

"Theresa," she finished, giving the older woman a quick bow and ignoring the fact that Masuyo didn't seem to remember her name, even though it hadn't been that long since she had told him.

Kaede nodded to her and motioned for her to sit by the fire. "You wear strange clothes, young one. Where are you from?"

"She came from the Well," Sesshoumaru said, taking up his own spot by the fire and nudging it with the fire poker. Dinner wasn't cooking fast enough, as far as he was concerned.

"From the Well?" Kaede repeated.

"From the Well," Sesshoumaru confirmed.

"What does 'from the well' mean?" Theresa asked.

Kaede turned to her while Sesshoumaru continued trying to make their dinner cook faster. "It means, you are not from this time," she said. "You are probably from the future, in fact. The only other person to ever come through the Well is from the future, after all."

Theresa studied her surroundings and nodded slowly. That made sense…well, as much sense as anything made in this situation. "So, to go back…I just have to jump into the

well again?"

Kaede shook her head. "You might not be able to go back. The fact that you were able

to come here at all is strange."

"Until you showed up, there were only two people who could travel through the Well," the black-haired young man said. "I wouldn't try jumping into it if I were you. I'm not going to rescue you."

Kaede glared at him. "You will rescue her if I tell you to, Masuyo." he just snorted and stared at the fire, while Kaede turned once more to Theresa. "What happened before you came here, do you remember?"

"I had gone to the shrine to see the family of one of my students. She hasn't been

coming to school much lately, and I'm worried about her. Her mother told me she was sick in a hospital in another city, but I didn't believe that. As I was leaving, I happened to see my student come out of this…shed-type thing…so I went to see what was in it. I found the well, and when I looked more carefully I thought I saw something glowing inside it. I was trying to figure out what I was seeing when I fell in."

"Hmm…I think, for now, you should stay here," Kaede said. "And when Kagome comes back--"

"Kagome! Is this where she comes when she's supposedly out sick, then?"

The elderly miko gave Theresa a surprised look. "I…I do not know. Is Kagome one of your students?"

"Yes. She's here a lot, isn't she?"

Kaede nodded. "She is the key to rebuilding the Shikon Jewel."

"Er…what?"

"Dinner's done," Sesshoumaru interrupted.

"Good. I can tell our guest the story while we eat," Kaede said, taking a bowl filled with food from Sesshoumaru and handing it to Theresa. "It is a long story, though, so I hope you are not too tired right now. The telling will take a while."


	5. Chapter 5

Yay! Happiness! Looks like whatever was wrong with FF.N's document manager has been fixed -- I wasn't able to load new chapters into the manager for a few days there, which is why this update was so long in coming. But things are fixed now, so here's a new chapter for you. Thank you all so much for being patient, and thank you especially to my reviewers for the great reviews. Enjoy!

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**Chapter 5 -- Three Weeks Later**

"Still no word on what happened to her?"

"No, nothing. It's like she completely vanished!"

"And we still don't know who the last people to see her were?"

"Right now it looks like it was us. But we saw her just before we left school, so that's no help to anyone. We don't know where she went when she was done for the day."

Kagome sighed and turned away from the knot of students crowding the hallway. The assistant English teacher, Theresa, had been gone for almost a month. She had vanished without a trace. Police reports claimed that nobody had seen her after leaving school the day before she was discovered missing. Nothing had been reported near her apartment -- no strange activities, no violent crimes, nothing. A search of her apartment had found that it was somewhat cluttered and chaotic, but there were no signs of forced entry, a fight, or that Theresa had even returned there after school. There was nothing at all to indicate that the day she had vanished was in any way out of the ordinary. And that's why nobody could stop talking about it.

"She was struggling, you know," Houjo-kun said softly, coming up beside Kagome. "You might not have noticed, because you've been out so much…but I could see it in her face and hear it in her voice. She was never meant to be our only teacher here, and it was wearing on her."

"I don't think she had many friends either," Eri added. "We wouldn't have even noticed she was gone if we hadn't had school the next day. We found out she was missing because she didn't show up, and didn't even call in sick.

Kagome sighed. "I hope she's alright. Theresa was a nice person."

The others nodded their agreement, then Houjo left the four girls and went off to his own classes.

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Sesshoumaru looked up just in time to see Theresa stumble one way, then the other, then completely lose her balance and fall face-first into the snow. She let out a low snow-muffled wail before pushing herself onto her knees and struggling to her feet, brushing the snow from the front of her borrowed clothes. She had been forced to borrow some of Kaede's things, and had been spending a lot of time on the ground in the last three weeks -- if she wasn't stumbling over hidden rocks or slipping on patches of ice, she was tripping over her long red hakama. From the looks of it, she had just encountered some ice. Sesshoumaru sighed, shook his head, and went to stand next to the human.

"Now I'm wet _and_ cold," she said miserably.

"We're almost to the village," he replied. "Come on." He knelt in front of her and glanced over his shoulder. "I'll carry you."

Theresa blinked in confusion, but obediently climbed onto his back and let him carry her the rest of the way to the village. Now, without a falling human to be worried about, Sesshoumaru finally had some quiet time to think. And he had a lot to think about. But it wasn't his own situation the consumed his thoughts now. Rather, it was the very girl resting comfortably on his back, arms wrapped around his shoulders and her head resting against him. She was tired, cold, wet, sore…and she trusted him completely.

He had first realized that a few days ago, when a minor youkai had attacked the village and gone straight for poor unarmed Theresa, as it had sensed she was the weakest of the group. Theresa had just sat there, staring at the beast in shock, apparently paralyzed with fear. It was Sesshoumaru who had gone to her rescue, and when he questioned her behavior after the fact, she claimed it was because she knew he would help her. He wasn't at all sure how she had come to this conclusion. For the first several days of her presence in the village, Sesshoumaru had made every effort to ignore her and stay out of her way. As with pretty much every other human he had ever met, he found her to be incredibly annoying. But there was no real reason for that -- she was a human, therefore she must be annoying. End of story.

Except that it wasn't the end. Somehow, she had grown on him. He had come to expect that she would tag along with him almost everywhere on the pretext of being helpful, that she would ask for his help in figuring out the workings of the village, that she would pick her meals apart and give him the bits she didn't like, and that she would seek him out when she wanted companionship. In that way, Theresa reminded him of Rin. But where he saw Rin as something of a foster child, Theresa definitely didn't fall into that category. In fact, he didn't know what to make of her. She treated him with great kindness, and in return Kaede seemed to expect that he would take care of her. But did his feelings go deeper than that? Sesshoumaru didn't have an answer.

"Hey," she said.

"Hmm?"

"We just passed Kaede's place."

Sesshoumaru glanced back. Indeed, he had walked right by the hut he shared with his

current companion and the older woman. "So we did."

"Do I want to know what you were thinking so hard about?" she teased.

"Probably not," he replied with a small smile. Upon arrival at the hut, he knelt again to let her off, then followed her inside. Time for dinner!

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And then, it appeared. The thing that forced Sesshoumaru to admit that not only had he stopped being annoyed by Theresa's existence, but he was growing attached to her…even starting to _like_ her a bit. It came with an unusual assortment of companions and a hairstyle that would have been seriously frowned upon by others of its kind. It bore a rosary, a staff, and an attitude.

It was a human man…and it was named Miroku.

Sesshoumaru hadn't had many chances to run into Miroku before. All he knew was that the young human man called himself a Buddhist monk (though he was definitely something of a rogue monk) and that he followed Inuyasha and Kagome around. Sesshoumaru wasn't sure why anyone would follow his younger half-brother so faithfully, and so he hadn't paid much attention to Miroku or the others. In fact, Sesshoumaru himself didn't know Miroku's name until the day the monk and his companions (Sango, Shippou, and Kirara) returned to Kaede's village for rest and to catch up on the news. He heard the group talking as they approached the hut, and was able to catch their names from that. He also noticed Theresa looking up at the hut's door, obviously curious about the approaching group.

They arrived moments later, Shippou leading the way. Sesshoumaru glanced at the little youkai once before going back to his own tasks, but Theresa just stared. "You…" she said softly.

Shippou turned to her. "What about me?"

"You…you're a…"

"He's a kitsune youkai," Sango said, entering the hut and propping her trusty hiraikotsu against the nearest wall.

"Wow. The only youkai I've ever seen have all been…well…a lot scarier than him."

Shippou went into a loud string of protests while Sesshoumaru struggled to hide a smirk. If only she knew…but his thoughts were interrupted by a new voice.

"I can't imagine that someone like you sees many youkai," Miroku said.

Theresa nodded. "I see them often enough. Too often, really. They tend to be so unpleasant,"

"Not like you, I'm sure, you seem very pleasant," Miroku continued, kneeling beside Theresa and leaning closer. "In fact, you seem pleasant enough to make me ask you something important -- will you bear my child?"

SMACK! THUD! Before anyone knew what had happened, a small wooden bowl flew across the room and hit poor Miroku right in the middle of his forehead, sending him sprawling while the bowl clattered to the floor. Theresa, Sango, and Shippou stared in shock at the fallen monk, then Sango turned her attention to the mysterious man in the corner. "You did that."

"I did," Sesshoumaru confirmed, his nose wrinkled in a sour look that Theresa found utterly endearing. "Disrespectful creature."

Sango and Theresa blinked at Sesshoumaru in shock, while Shippou and Kirara examined Miroku. "Who is he?" Sango whispered to Theresa.

"That's Masuyo. He's one of the villagers here."

"I've never seen him before," Sango said. "Or you, for that matter."

"Right, well, that's because I'm new here," Theresa said. "I'm Theresa. But Masuyo was here before I arrived."

"Masuyo has been with us for a few weeks now," Kaede added as she entered the hut, finally returning from wherever she had been (she hadn't bothered to tell Sesshoumaru or Theresa where she was going). "I was wondering when you three would return. Kagome and Inuyasha have not come back yet, I'm afraid."

Miroku propped himself on one hand and rubbed his head, wincing a bit. That bowl had hit quite hard. "That hurt…"

"Be more respectful in the future and I won't have to do it again," Sesshoumaru sniffed. "Now, if you'll excuse me, we need more wood." And with that, the man everyone knew as Masuyo made a hasty exit.

"He's a strange one," Sango murmured.

Theresa just shrugged and turned her attention to making some tea. "He's very kind to me, and he's saved my life in the past. I wonder what brought that about, though…he's not usually so protective of me."

"Miroku's a pervert," Shippou grumbled. "Better watch it, he can't keep his hands to himself."

"Er…thanks," Theresa said, inching away from the monk. Miroku just glared at Shippou before letting out a deep, long-suffering sigh.

"Theresa, where are you from?" Sango asked.

The former English teacher blinked in alarm, then stammered, "Er, well…it's quite far from here, you see, so I don't think you'd know it…Kaede didn't know it when I told her, so…"

Sango gave her a reassuring smile, while Kirara curled into a little yellow-and-black ball and settled in for a nap beside Theresa's leg. "Do you like it here?"

"Oh yeah, it's great! I have Kaede and Masuyo, and the villagers are really nice to me…I could do without the cold weather though."

"It'll be warm soon enough," Miroku said. "Perfect weather for romance…" He was cut short by Sango and hiraikotsu this time.

"Men, They never learn," Theresa said. Sango and Shippou nodded in sage agreement, while Miroku rubbed his head again and moaned about his poor fortune.

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It had gotten dark out before Kaede and Theresa started wondering where Masuyo had gone. He was more than capable of taking care of himself, certainly, but he normally would have a least come back for food by now. Finally, Theresa got tired of wondering where he had gone and decided to go looking for him. She promised not to go beyond the village boundaries, and even took Kaede's extra bow and set of arrows with her (though what good they would do she didn't know, as she was terrible with weapons). Theresa slipped from the hut and looked around, then headed off towards the forest. Sure enough, she found Masuyo not too long later. He was perched on a rock, back towards the village and face pointed at the full moon, his long hair loose and swaying a bit in the gentle breeze. A few stray snowflakes settled on his hair, sparkling like diamonds for a moment or two before melting or being blown away. Though she couldn't see his eyes from here, Theresa was sure that they too sparkled like precious jewels in the moonlight.

She got as close to him as she dared (he had his sword with him and she didn't feel like becoming its next victim), then said, "You didn't come to see if dinner was ready."

Masuyo glanced over his shoulder at her, then turned back to his quiet contemplation of the moon. "Is that monk still there?"

"Yeah. So are Sango and Shippou and the little cat-thing…what's its name…"

"Kirara, I think."

"That's it. Kirara."

Masuyo nodded, then brushed the thin layer of snow off the other side of his rock perch and tapped it. "Come sit. Moons like this are worth watching."

Theresa set the bow and arrows beside the rock, then (with a bit of help from Masuyo) scrambled onto the rock and settled down beside him. This close, she could see the little puffs of fog when he exhaled, and could see how the moonlight shone off his skin and made it look like he glowed. Theresa looked down at her own hands, thinking how unfair

it was that a man looked far prettier than she could ever hope to look.

"You didn't seem at all upset when he asked you to bear his child."

"Eh?"

Theresa looked up to see Masuyo's dark-blue eyes fixed on her face. "When Miroku asked you to bear his child earlier. You didn't seem at all upset," he said.

"Oh, right," Theresa said, feeling her cheeks burn at the memory. "Well, I do think it was rude of him, very forward and all…but you know? Part of me enjoyed it."

His eyebrow twitched. "You cannot be serious."

"I am serious," Theresa countered. "Masuyo, where I come from, men aren't interested in me at all. I ask a man out on a date and he says no. I go to a party and wind up alone all night. I try to be nice and it gets me nowhere. I'm short and fat, and people don't like girls who look like me or spend more time worrying about books and learning than about the latest fashions. It's all so silly and shallow but it _hurts_ to be ignored all the time…so when Miroku asked me that, part of me was really offended, yes. I'm more than my ability to reproduce, for crying out loud. But part of me thought it was great that someone, somewhere, was interested in me for something other than my ability to speak English."

Masuyo blinked at her in confusion. That was the most he had ever heard out of her at once, and there were a lot of things in that little rant that made no sense to him (what did she mean by asking a guy out on a date? And what the hell was English?). But he understood something about it. Something about what Miroku had done had made her happy. Could simply paying attention to her like that be all it took? "Theresa…"

"I'm very lonely where I come from," she continued. "There's a reason I have no desire to go back, or to even try going back. I know you don't always like having me around, but you and Kaede are the best friends I've had in years." She looked up at him and smiled. "Why would I want to leave my friends, especially when one is willing to throw a bowl at a monk to defend me?"

His face turned bright red at the memory. "That was just reflex," he muttered.

Theresa laughed, then slipped off the rock and gathered her things. "Come on, it's freezing out here. I want to go back inside."

Masuyo sighed, but he smiled, slid off the rock, and turned to follow the human girl back into the village. He took one quick glance back towards the forest when he thought he saw something glowing, but quickly decided it must have been the moonlight reflecting off the snow and shrugged. Time to go make sure a certain monk was finally behaving. Well, if he could get his mind off the girl, that is. Her hair looked so very soft and smooth in the moonlight, and her eyes sparkled enough to rival the stars…even if he wasn't ready to admit such things out loud.

In the trees at the very edge of the forest, the spirit of the Inu no Taishou counted to ten before leaning around his tree once more. He watched his son follow the young human down the path back towards the main part of the village and gave a small, satisfied nod. Maybe things would turn out all right after all.


	6. Chapter 6

Aaaaaaand, here we have a little more drama, because that's what I felt like writing. Plus, we had to get Kagome and Inuyasha into the story somehow (even though they stay in the background, really -- the story isn't about them, after all). So! I hope you enjoy it, don't forget to review, and I'm working on the next chapter as you read.

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**Chapter 6 -- The last week of December**

Kagome glared down at her math homework before letting her head fall to her desk and giving a little moan of despair. She raised her head when the sound of curious sniffing invaded her miserable reverie and narrowed her eyes at the white-haired hanyou examining her desk. "What are you doing?"

"Smelling it, whaddya think?" he replied. "Keh. Are you almost finished here?"

"Inuyasha, I've told you, the exams coming up are some of my biggest yet. I can't go back right now…I though you understood that."

Inuyasha sighed and resettled himself on her bed, yellow eyes fixed on the back of her head as usually. Kagome shook her head and did her best to ignore the irritated hanyou while she struggled through the latest set of problems. Unfortunately, she didn't get much of a chance to work, for a new interruption came in the sound of a knock on the house's main door. The high school girl got up to go answer it, but she had only made it so far as her own door when she heard her mother's voice greeting whoever had come for a visit. She paused and frowned, listening closely, then her eyes widened in shock.

"What's wrong?" Inuyasha asked.

"The police," Kagome whispered. "What are they doing here?"

"Police?"

"Shh! I'm trying to hear!"

Inuyasha grumbled something about reincarnated priestesses with attitudes, but Kagome ignored him, choosing instead to press her ear to her door. The voices were muffled, but like this she could still understand what was going on.

"Sorry to bother you, ma'am. This is the Higurashi shrine, correct?" an unfamiliar male voice asked.

"Yes, I'm the daughter-in-law of the caretaker. Can I help you?" Kagome's mother's voice replied.

"Maybe, ma'am. We were wondering if we could ask you some questions about this woman."

Silence for a moment, then, "Oh, my, that's the English teacher who's missing, isn't it?"

"Yes ma'am. We're still trying to figure out where she was last seen before she disappeared. You didn't happen to see her at any time on the day of December ninth, did you?"

"I don't recall…oh, wait. Yes, she came by to talk about Kagome. My daughter has been very ill several times this year and has been missing a lot of school."

"So the teacher was here?"

"Yes, in the afternoon," Kagome's mother said.

"Do you have any idea where she was heading after she left here?" the police officer asked.

"Home, I suppose. Or perhaps back to school, or to visit some other families. She didn't tell me, really."

"But you are one hundred percent certain she left the shrine grounds?"

"Oh, of course!"

"Alright then. Thank you, ma'am, very sorry to bother you." A few moments later, Kagome heard the house's front door close.

"That didn't sound so good," Inuyasha murmured from his spot at the end of her bed, where he had been sitting with his ear pressed to the wall beside the door.

Kagome frowned. "No, it didn't. But really…someone would have noticed if she was still on the shrine grounds. It's not like there are that many places to hide…" She gasped. "Unless…what if she went through the well?"

"I thought we were the only ones who could do that," Inuyasha said.

"Well, the only ones besides us who have ever tried are Sato and Shippou, right? Maybe they just didn't have the strength to make it through or something. It's worth investigating!" And before Inuyasha could say anything, Kagome had yanked open her door and rushed down the stairs.

"Oi, Kagome!" Iunyasha scrambled after her.

"Mama! Mama!"

Kagome's mother poked her head out of the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about. "Oh, Kagome! Is everything alright?"

"Mama, did you actually see my teacher leave the shrine grounds when she came to visit you?"

"Kagome, why would I watch her leave? She's an adult! I saw her out the door, of course, but --"

"I think I know where she is! Inuyasha, stay here, I'll be right back." Leaving a bewildered mother and an equally annoyed hanyou in her wake, Kagome raced out of the house, to the main part of the shrine grounds, and into the well house. Without a second thought, she jumped down the stairs and vaulted over the side of the well. Moments later, she was engulfed in the brilliant blue and white light of a journey through time, and soon found herself sitting on the bottom of the well five hundred years in the past. It took more time and effort to get out of the well than to get in it, but Kagome made relatively quick work of the task, scrambling over the well's edge and turning towards Kaede's village. It was possible that the old miko would have some sort of hint for her. The cold air and the snow soaking into her shoes made her walk faster than usual, and she arrived at Kaede's village in record time. Next stop, Kaede's hut.

She could hear voices on the other side of the curtain separating the hut's interior from the external elements, but it was too cold for her to stand around trying to figure out whose voices she was hearing. "I'm back!" she called, pushing the curtain aside and stepping into the warm hut.

"Welcome back, Kagome. Oh, are you alone this time?" Kaede asked, looking up from the fire.

"I came to look for someone," Kagome replied, "so I told Inuyasha to wait for me at the house."

"So this IS where you go when you skip school," a second, sterner voice said. Kagome turned towards the voice and grinned.

"So you ARE here," she said. "We've been going crazy looking for you, Hyland-san."

Theresa gave a little snort and turned her attention to pouring a cup of tea for herself.

She paused for a moment, then grabbed another cup and poured some tea for Kagome as well. "Get those wet shoes and socks off and sit by the fire, you'll get sick if you're not careful," she said, handing the tea to her student. Kagome promptly obeyed and took a seat as close to the fire as she dared.

"Why haven't you come back?" she asked. "You went through the well once already. Isn't it allowing you to go back?"

Theresa sipped her tea and sat silently for a moment, then looked at Kagome out of the corner of her eye. "Honestly, I haven't tried to go back," she finally said. "I was very lonely in Tokyo -- all of my time was spent working, and even when I did have a chance to go out, people just ignored me. But here…well, I have friends. You know some of them, I think. Sango, Miroku, and Shippou, yes? Oh, and of course, there's Masuyo."

Kagome blinked in surprise. Theresa had already met Sango and the others? But who was this… "Masuyo?"

"Yep!" Theresa exclaimed, beaming. "He's…he's…I don't know how to explain him. Masuyo is very quiet, but he takes care of me. And it doesn't hurt that he's quite attractive." She looked towards the hut's door as though expecting to see the man she spoke of appear there, summoned by her words. "I don't know what I would do without him here."

"Masuyo feels the same way about you, I think," Kaede interjected. "But he would never admit to that. He isn't the type, you see."

"Right," Theresa agreed, sighing in exasperation and glaring down at her teacup as though it has caused Masuyo's cool attitude.

"Well, I'm happy for you," Kagome said, "but you have to come back. We need you!"

Theresa snorted and set her cup down. "Right. I was a terrible teacher, and you know it. You're better off without me. Or is it that you have no teacher at all now?"

Kagome looked perturbed. "No, we have teachers…they take turns coming from the other schools. But that just makes it all worse! They never know what we've already been over and what we haven't studied yet. It's terrible. At least you were consistent --"

"And if that's all I was, then I still say you're better off without me. Consistent bad teaching is still bad teaching, Kagome."

"But…but…"

"I think what young Kagome is trying to say is that you have a duty to her and her classmates," Kaede said. "You were appointed to be their teacher --"

"No, I wasn't. I was appointed to help their teacher, and I got forced into the role of teacher when their REAL teacher got sick," Theresa replied, dark eyes narrowed in a fiery glare.

Kaede sighed. "The point is the same, Theresa. You had to become their teacher because of circumstances beyond your control. But when you did, when you took up that position, you took on the duties of the teacher. You have to fulfill those."

"Why are you pushing me into this now? I've been here for a month."

"I did not know you had abandoned your post to come here, or I would have said all of this to you a month ago instead."

Theresa fumed silently for several minutes, while Kaede went about her household

chores and Kagome huddled by the fire. Finally, she said, "It's the start of the weekend tomorrow, right? There's no need for me to go back right this minute."

"Right. You have a couple of days before the new week," Kagome said.

Any answer the English teacher could have given was interrupted by a new arrival -- Masuyo, who had apparently gone out to collect more firewood, and who had finally returned with a fresh stack. He raised an eyebrow at Kagome, but otherwise showed no surprise at seeing her in the small hut.

"Oh, you're back," Theresa said, cheering up a bit now that Masuyo was back. "This is Kagome, one of my students," she added, pointing to the girl. "And that's Masuyo."

Kagome and Masuyo gave each other short but respectful bows, then Masuyo turned his attention to sorting and piling the firewood. Kagome watched him for a moment, the abruptly stood, collected her still-damp socks from where they had been drying, and declared, "I need to go get some things from the house -- I'll bring you my English notes so you know what we've been doing, Hyland-san. Be right back!" And with that, she pulled on her socks and shoes and dashed out of the hut before anyone could say a word.

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Kagome burst into her room, startling a dozing Inuyasha so badly that he fell off her bed and sprawled on the floor. He hauled himself to his feet and was about to launch into a tirade when Kagome, still sorting through her school notes, turned to him. "Sesshoumaru doesn't turn into something else every month like you do, does he?"

"Er…"

"You know, like when you turn into a human during the new moon? He doesn't do that, does he?"

Inuyasha sighed. "Sesshoumaru is a full youkai, so I doubt it. Why?"

"Because I just met a human who looks so much like him it's scary. The hair and the eyes were wrong -- black hair and blue-grey eyes -- but his face looks just like your brother. I want you to come with me and tell me what you think."

"Fine," the hanyou said, "but we're going to do some jewel-hunting while we're there."

Kagome grumbled about her tests and not having time, but since Inuyasha wouldn't budge until she agreed, she finally said yes. He followed her down the stairs, back through the well, and all the way to Kaede's hut. They arrived to find the hut packed with people -- it seemed that, in the short time it took Kagome to collect Inuyasha and her notebooks, the rest of their group had arrived. Masuyo and Miroku were having something of a face-off from their respective places on either side of the hut, and Masuyo appeared to have settled into a protective stance as close to Theresa as propriety allowed. Kagome greeted her friends happily, then took a spot beside Sango to enjoy dinner.

"What's up with Masuyo and Miroku?" she asked the other woman.

"The first time they met, Miroku asked Theresa to bear his child, and Masuyo threw a wooden bowl at him. It hit him pretty hard too, right on the forehead."

"Ouch," Kagome said, taking the bowl Inuyasha passed her. "Oh, by the way, Inuyasha, that's Theresa," she added, motioning to her teacher. "And the man next to her is Masuyo."

Dinner was a relatively peaceful affair, though there was almost some drama at one point when Masuyo thought Miroku was trying to flirt with Theresa. Things calmed down quickly, though, and once dinner was over Kagome, Inuyasha, and their friends went outside to talk and plan their course of action for the weekend. Plus, Kagome wanted to ask Inuyasha about Masuyo.

"It's not Sesshoumaru. It can't be Sesshoumaru," he insisted, shaking his head firmly.

"But the face…" Kagome said.

"I thought he looked familiar…" Sango murmured. "But his facial markings are gone, and Sesshoumaru doesn't have black hair or blue eyes like that."

"He's not Sesshoumaru," Inuyasha repeated. "I don't care what he looks like, he didn't smell a bit like Sesshoumaru. They're different people."

Miroku frowned and tapped his chin. "So where is Sesshoumaru, then?" Kagome and Inuyasha looked up at him in shock, and he continued, "Sango and I was talking the other day about how different it's been around here. There aren't many youkai in the area

around the village, but they're running rampant everywhere else. We haven't run into Sesshoumaru or Rin or Jaken in ages. It's like they just…vanished. But where would someone like Sesshoumaru go?"

The group pondered in silence for a moment, then Kagome said, "Could they have died?"

"Rin and Jaken maybe," Inuyasha said, "but Sesshoumaru is still pretty young. He wouldn't have died of old age or illness, and he's really too strong for just anyone or anything to kill him."

"I agree," Sango said. "Something else is going on here."

"We don't have time to worry about it, though," Inuyasha said. "We've only got two days. Tomorrow, we start hunting the Jewel shards again."


	7. Chapter 7

New chapter! In which Sesshoumaru is confused about his feelings, Kagome bemoans having been away too long, and Inu no Taishou is sneaky. Again. Enjoy, and don't forget to leave a review!

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**Chapter 7**

Theresa, Kaede, and Sesshoumaru (as Masuyo) woke up early enough to see Kagome and the others off. Though Sesshoumaru would never admit it to the two women, he was grateful to see the group of Jewel hunters go. Hiding the fact that he knew Kagome had been hard enough. Hiding the fact that he knew and loathed Inuyasha had been an entirely different problem, and he had been certain that his younger brother would be able to identify him instantly, and that would have been a disaster. But somehow, Inuyasha hadn't been able to identify that the human known as Masuyo was really the youkai Sesshoumaru. He didn't know how it had happened. He was just happy that his cover hadn't been blown. After all, who knew how Theresa would react to the revelation that she had been living with such a dangerous youkai. And though he would never admit to it either, he was terrified of losing her.

Hence, he was in a very bad mood at the revelation that she would be leaving in two days.

"Masuyo, will you _please_ stop acting like this?" she finally scolded him around noon. "I'm trying to figure out what I'll have to do when I get back."

"You could have said something, you know," he said bitterly. "You could have told me you would have to go back someday."

"I didn't think I _would_ have to go back," she snapped. "You think I _want_ to go back? I don't want to leave this place. I've actually been _happy_ here, you know. What makes you think I want to leave?"

He sighed and sat down beside her, watching her work. Finally, he said, "You're going to come back, right?"

"Of course," she replied, flipping to another page before smiling up at him. "I don't know how often I'll be able to come back, but I'm not going to be gone forever."

"Good," Sesshoumaru said. He wasn't sure what surprised him more, the fact that he was pleased a human would return to visit him, or that fact that such a thing had become an issue in the first place.

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Kagome sighed and dropped her pack. "I've been away too long…" she moaned.

"Maybe next time you'll come back when I ask," Inuyasha grumbled, plopping himself on the nearest rock and glowering sourly at nothing in particular. Sango, Miroku, Kirara, and Shippou were quite glad for the break, and each found a little patch of shade to rest in. It wasn't so much that they had traveled far from the village (though they all had to admit that they had covered a fair distance), but that they had already battled three minor youkai since noon. It wasn't long until dinnertime now, but none of them really wanted to think about cooking. They were too tired.

But it seemed that their troubles weren't over, for just as they had all settled in, Inuyasha tensed and turned his attention to a nearby clump of bushes. "Something's coming," he said.

"Another youkai?" Kagome asked, instantly becoming more alert.

"Maybe," Inuyasha said. "It smells kind of familiar, though…"

He rested his hand on Tessaiga's hilt while Sango readied Hiraikotsu, Miroku started removing the sacred rosary that sealed his Kazaana, and Kagome grabbed her bow and arrows. Kirara and Shippou too turned their attention to the bushes. They thought themselves well prepared but then, with a great shout, a lone figure leapt from the bushes in a blur of motion and landed behind Inuyasha, making a mighty, sweeping kick at his legs. Inuyasha was more agile than that, though, and he managed to evade the blow, whirling in preparation for giving one of his own. Kagome's eyes were sharp, though, and just as Inuyasha was about to strike his attacker she shouted, "No, wait!" When that didn't show signs of working, she resorted to the ever-useful "Osuwari!" and Inuyasha was crashing face-first into the ground.

"What'd ya do _that_ for?" he grumbled. But Kagome wasn't paying any attention. She was too busy focusing on the new arrival in their resting spot.

"Ayame, right? Kouga's fiance?" she asked.

The female wolf youkai nodded. "I'm surprised to see you, Kagome. It's been a long time."

"School's been keeping me busy," the human said dryly. "But what's with you, attacking us like that?"

"I'm sorry," Ayame said, and they could tell she meant it. "Things have been bad lately, though, and we can never tell who's a friend and who isn't. It's smarter to just

attack first."

"Any idea what's going on?" Sango asked.

Ayame shook her head. "We think it might be related to Rin and Jaken coming to stay

with us, though."

"Rin and Jaken?" the others chorused, looking shocked.

"Yes. You know them?"

Inuyasha nodded. "Unless there are more Rin and Jaken pairs out there than we know."

"Well, maybe you can figure out what's going on, then," Ayame said. "Come on. I'll take you to meet them."

They followed Ayame to another camp, not too far from where they had stopped, filled with wolf youkai like Ayame but (much to Kagome's relief) without a single actual wolf in sight. The youkai scattered about looked up from their tasks to study the new arrivals, decided that they must be alright if they were with Ayame, and went back to their work. Ayame led them to a small, sheltered area, and motioned to the two beings waiting patiently for her return. Kagome and the others didn't need introductions to know that they were indeed face-to-face with Rin and Jaken.

"What are you two doing here?" Kagome asked, kneeling down to give Rin a hug. "Where's Sesshoumaru?"

"Rin doesn't know," the little girl replied. "But Inu-jii-san and Maru-kun said we should stay here for a while, while Sesshoumaru-sama is away."

"Inu-jii-san? Maru-kun?" Kagome asked, confused.

Rin nodded. "They brought us here. Rin doesn't remember their names, though."

"Tsukuyomaru is a young fool," Jaken muttered. "Why Inu no Taishou involved him in this plot I will never know."

Inuyasha's eye twitched, but Kagome ignored him and plowed on. "Rin, why don't you tell me everything that happened. When was the last time you saw Sesshoumaru?"

"Mmm…Rin doesn't remember exactly…"

"They were brought to us about two months ago," Ayame said,. "At first we didn't believe the spirits who brought them, but their stories all matched."

"Rin just knows that Sesshoumaru-sama was really angry for a long time, and that Inu-jii-san said we'd be safer here. He said that he and his friends were going to help Sesshoumaru-sama stop being so angry."

"It won't work, though," Jaken said. "Whatever crazy scheme they came up with won't work. What do they know? They're all dead."

Kagome finally decided that she wasn't going to get much useful information out of Rin or Jaken, and after a short chat with Rin about other things, she and her friends went to have a longer talk with Ayame.

"Like I said, they came here two months ago in the company of two spirits. We didn't believe them at first, but we talked to them all separately and their stories matched. The spirits who brought them said that Sesshoumaru had been getting more and more violent, and that they had something planned to help change that, but they wouldn't give any details. Rin and Jaken also said Sesshoumaru had been more violent than usual, and they also said something about…well, it's really strange…a group of youkai spirits doing something to Sesshoumaru while he slept. Apparently Rin and Jaken were taken away before the spirits were done, though, because that's about all they could say."

"That would explain why Sesshoumaru hasn't been around much lately," Sango murmured.

"It would also explain why so many lesser youkai are out and about. They were always afraid of him before, but now he's not here to keep them in line," Miroku added.

"You don't think…" Kagome started, but quickly shook her head. "No. It's too crazy."

"You're thinking of Masuyo?" Inuyasha asked.

"Yes. Something Kaede once told me about when he arrived in the village…it fits this timeline perfectly."

Miroku shook his head. "Masuyo is human."

"There are supposed to be ways to purify youkai so that they take on totally human forms," Ayame said. "Could something like that be at work here?"

"Either way, we have to go back to Kaede's village and warn them. Sesshoumaru is really dangerous, and he's living in the village with humans. He hates humans!"

Ayame convinced them to stay for dinner, but after a hasty meal the group was off again, traveling back the way they had just come in a desperate bid to warn Kaede of the dangerous being she might have living in her hut. It didn't really matter to Kagome that Sesshoumaru (if Masuyo was indeed Sesshoumaru) had been living there peacefully for almost two months. He could snap at any time, she reasoned. Better to be safe than sorry.

They had made it a good bit of the way back, and were just searching for a safe place

to spend the night, when suddenly they found themselves faced with a rather brighter light than they would normally expect for this time of day. A quick look around revealed the source -- a ghost, standing in the middle of their path and blocking their progress. And not just any ghost, either. There, in all his spiky-armored and long-haired glory, stood Inuyasha's father.

"Oi, oyaji!" Inuyasha spat. "You're blocking the way. And you're too damn bright."

"Sorry, not much I can do about that," the elder youkai said dryly. "I am dead, after all."

"You brought Rin and Jaken to Ayame, didn't you?" Kagome asked.

He nodded. "I did. It's so cute that she calls me Inu-jii-san, isn't it? I just hope she doesn't start calling Sesshoumaru 'chichi-ue'. I don't think he'd take it too well. Incidentally, I'm here to talk to you about Sesshoumaru." The others exchanged surprised looks, but Inu-no-Taishou ignored them and continued on. "Sesshoumaru's hatred of humans is legendary, but lately he's gone overboard, even by the standards of other human-hating youkai. When Menoumaru starts asking what's gotten into Sesshoumaru you know something has to be wrong, that damned moth rivals Sesshoumaru for negative attitudes towards humans. We were pretty content to just let it go and hope he'd get the violence out of his system on his own…until he raised a hand to Rin. As soon as he started to show signs of violence towards her, we knew we had to intervene. I don't have the time to explain everything to you in great detail, but the short version is…we decided that the only way to get Sesshoumaru to stop was to force him to have a better understanding of humans. He has been placed under a spell. He will regain his youkai form someday, provided he learns to love a human with all his heart. Rin doesn't count for this -- it has to be another human. And he has to be willing to put his life on the line for that human."

Kagome nodded slowly. "So Masuyo is…"

"Sesshoumaru. Yes. And I wouldn't worry about Kaede too much. She already knows everything. Also, Kagome, I caution you against trying to force your teacher to stay in your time against her will. She has developed feelings for my oldest son, and though he won't admit it anytime soon he has developed feelings for her too. Keeping them apart would be cruel."

"Do you think she's the key to him becoming a youkai again?" Sango asked.

"I don't know. In some ways, I hope she is. But in the end, even if she's just a step towards his redemption…all I care is that neither of them are hurt in the process."

"You don't want us to interfere, do you?" Kagome asked.

Inu-no-Taishou shook his head. "Just let events happen as they need. Things will work themselves out in the end. But you, young monk," he said, turning to Miroku, "I strongly recommend you keep any more baby-making comments or flirtatious actions to yourself. Sesshoumaru is a jealous man, and frankly, when it comes to you, I don't blame him." He gave a group a sad smile and added, "I'm out of time here, sadly. Inuyasha, behave yourself, and take care." And with that, he was gone.


	8. Chapter 8

Ah, I'm sorry folks, this is a bit short. I'm not having the greatest day, so I was lacking in inspiration. I hope you enjoy it anyway, and leave me some nice reviews to come home to.

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**Chapter 8**

The end of the weekend saw everyone once more gathered at Kaede's hut. Theresa had changed back into her modern clothes (which were no longer all that comfortable to her) and was currently having lunch with the group. She wanted to wash her borrowed clothes before leaving, though, and so Masuyo and Miroku had called a truce and spent a good portion of the morning before lunch hauling buckets of water from the nearby river so they could heat a tubful of water for her laundry duties. Kagome had ordered Inuyasha not to help -- she knew his temper would get the better of him and that he would be likely to blow Sesshoumaru's cover. By the time lunch was over, the washing water was nice and warm, and Theresa set off to wash her clothes. Kagome and Inuyasha chose to spend the time with their friends, leaving Sesshoumaru to his own devices. Finally getting tired of being left out of the conversation and not having any chores of his own, he slipped out of the hut and went around to the back, where Theresa was busy with the laundry.

"Do you need help?" he asked.

"Nah," she replied. "I'm just going to rinse this a bit more, then see where Kaede wants it left to dry."

He nodded and watched her for a moment, then reached out, took her shoulder, and turned her so they were facing each other, resting his other hand on her other shoulder as he did. "Promise me something," he said, struggling to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. "Promise me that you'll come back, and that if, somehow, the well won't let you through again, you'll find a way to let me know that."

"Masuyo, didn't we already have this conversation? Do you really think I would just leave you like that?" she asked softly, reaching up to rest her hand on his wrist. "I don't want to leave as it is. Like hell I'm going to go away forever, if I can help it."

"Well, good. You remember that promise," he said. And then, before either of them really knew what he was doing, he pulled her closer and tenderly kissed her. Theresa's eyes widened for a moment, but then she closed them and melted into his embrace, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck as he held her close. When they finally broke the kiss, she smiled and rested her head on his shoulder.

"Don't worry," she whispered. "I'm not going to forget." They stayed like that for a few moments, then Theresa decided she needed to finish the laundry and go back to her own time. Kaede helped her hang the wet clothes to dry, then she gathered her things and the entire household made the trip up to the well. With a final jaunty wave to the group, Kagome and Theresa jumped into the well together, and vanished in a flash of blue-white light. Their friends stood watching the well for a bit, then turned to go. Sesshoumaru felt like he should be sad, or angry, or something…but instead, he found that the sensation of sheer joy he had felt when he kissed Theresa refused to go away. He would see her again, he knew it. He just had to be patient.

But there was something else he hoped would happen now. On the pretext of collecting more firewood for the hut, Sesshoumaru chose to stay behind in the forest. Somehow, he doubted that returning to his youkai form in front of an audience would be a smart move. And so it was that he moved deeper into the forest. He found a nice, peaceful spot, where he paused, standing with arms outstretched and eyes closed, breathing the crisp winter air. Sesshoumaru waited and waited, but didn't feel any change. Finally, he cracked one eye open and raised his hand to his face, carefully examining his wrist. But the magenta stripes that usually marked his wrists were still gone. With a sigh, he closed his eye and returned to his silent meditation. A few minutes later, he opened one eyes again and studied his wrist. Still no change. The third round of meditation found him nearly asleep by the time he gave up, this time opening both eyes and staring down at his wrists. No youkai stripes. He pulled a fistful of his hair over his shoulder and stared at it, but it was as jet-black as it had been before his meditations. He strongly suspected that his eyes were still blue, as well.

"Alright, what's going on here?" he asked.

"Well, are you willing to die for her?"

Sesshoumaru whirled and glared at the purple-haired youkai that had appeared behind him. "What kind of crazy question is that? Of course I'm not willing to die for her."

"Then, you still haven't fully learned your lesson," his father said, appearing (along with the other ghosts from before) beside the purple-haired youkai. "You need to feel that sort of strong connection to her, that sort of strong love and compassion for her, before you will have learned all you need to learn."

Sesshoumaru sighed. "I don't remember being told that when this started."

"That's because you chose to ignore it," Tsukuyomaru pointed out. "But look, you've already learned a few things. First, that whining will do you no good. Second, that humans aren't horrible to live with. And third, that you really can care for a human, and quite deeply at that."

"Good skies you're sappy," Menoumaru muttered.

"Gee, maybe that's because I have a child with a human mother," Tsukuyomaru snapped.

"Alright, you two," Hoshiyomi interjected. "Tsu-kun has a point. Sesshoumaru is learning. We're finished here, for now."

"Just remember," Inu-no-Taishou added before fading away, "you don't have to actually die for her, you just have to be willing to do it. Trust me, you'll know when that time has come." And with that, he, his companions, and the purple-haired youkai were gone, leaving a very disgruntled Sesshoumaru behind.


	9. Chapter 9

Good skies this gets a lot of hits...I woke up this morning to find it had over 1500 hits. Wow! Thank you, everyone, for reading this...hope this chapter is fun, and don't forget to review!

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**Chapter 9**

Theresa's sudden reappearance in Tokyo was greeted with an uproar the likes of which she had never expected to encounter in her entire life. Within hours, all of the major news channels were covering her return as their big story. The following morning, her face (along with headlines like "Runaway Teacher Comes Home" and "Return of the English Teacher") was plastered over the front pages of every newspaper in Japan, and quite a few abroad. She was whisked off to be examined by a team of doctors and psychiatrists, who declared her healthy and fit to work, despite her insistences that she didn't remember what had happened to her over the past month -- a lie, of course, but only because she knew they wouldn't believe what had really happened.. And so it was that, by the time Wednesday rolled around, Theresa was ready to once again take up her post as English teacher at Kagome's school. But all the attention came with its annoyances, namely the fact that Theresa wasn't able to return to Kaede's village anytime soon. The school had her under almost-constant surveillance. It was the end of January before she was able to convince them that she actually needed some time to herself to recover from her experience, and the school administrators finally agreed to leave her be on the weekends. The last weekend of January saw the first chance she had had all month to follow Kagome through the well and visit Kaede…and Masuyo. Theresa had been afraid that the well wouldn't let her through again, but there was nothing to fear -- a jump into the well, a flash of blue-white light, and she was back in the peace and quite of Inuyasha's Wood not too far from Kaede's village.

Kagome climbed out of the well first, with Theresa scrambling to follow. Theresa had made it all the way to the top of the well and was just hauling herself over the edge when a pair of hands grabbed her under the arms and pulled her out of the well. She reached out to grab the nearest thing to steady herself and found her hands resting on a set of strong shoulders framed by long, jet-black hair. She looked up a bit more, hoping that her hunch was correct…and indeed, she found herself staring into Masuyo's deep blue-grey eyes.

"I thought you weren't coming back," he said, voice strained with emotion.

"Hey, I promised I would come back, didn't I?" Theresa said, grinning at him and leaning close for a tight hug. "I just got held up a bit more than expected."

Masuyo set her down and took her bag from her, hefting it a bit and eyeing it dubiously. "You're not staying very long, are you?"

"I can't. The school expects me back in two days."

He sighed. "Well, I guess it can't be helped. We have to accept what we have. Come on, then, Kaede will want to see you. Oh, hello, Kagome, things are going well for you too I take it?" Theresa grinned and chuckled as she followed the two down to the village. It was good to be back.

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The next few weeks passed quickly, and before anyone in modern Japan really knew it, Valentine's Day was upon them. Yes, the day of hearts and flowers and cupid and chocolate, the day where women gave chocolates to the special men in their lives in the hopes of getting something from those men during the White Day celebration a month later, the day when love was in the air and all was romantic and blissful.

Theresa hated Valentine's Day.

"Maybe it is different over here, I don't know," she said the week before Valentine's Day, as she and Kagome left the school grounds and headed towards the Higurashi shrine for their weekly trip through the well. "But back home, it's just…I hate it. It's like an excuse to make single people feel inadequate just because they're single."

"But you aren't single," Kagome pointed out. "You have Masuyo."

"Do I really, though?" Theresa asked, fiddling with the wrapper on a packet of Pocky. "He kissed me _once_, back in December. He's so close-mouthed about anything. I mean, how hard would it be for him to just come right out and say he likes me? And why is it so damn hard to open a packet of Pocky?"

Kagome stifled a laugh as her teacher finally managed to open her snack and pulled on of the little icing-coated sticks from the packet, biting it viciously as though it was the cause of her man woes. "Oh, you know what…you should do something for Valentine's Day!"

Theresa blinked. "Kagome…"

"No, listen. It would be a good way for you to figure out more about how he feels for you. I'll go with you and explain all about Valentine's Day and White Day to him, and you can bring him something…and we'll see what happens."

"Yeah, except that then I wind up waiting a whole month to know anything," Theresa pointed out.

"Maybe not. Depends on how he feels. And you can tell a lot by how he reacts to your gift."

"Hmm…" Theresa pondered the idea for a moment, then sighed. "Guess I need to get some nice chocolates for him, then."

"Get some traditional Japanese sweets, too," Kagome said. "He might not like chocolate."

"Right, right. Dammit, how do I end up involved in such crazy ideas?"

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Valentine's Day fell on a Friday that year, much to Theresa's dismay. Friday being a school day meant she had to suffer through the various Valentine's Day antics of her students, and she was quite grateful when the day was over. She had brought her overnight bag and her small collection of high-quality chocolates and Japanese sweets with her to school, and thus didn't even need to make a side-trip to her apartment before heading for the Higurashi shrine. Kagome was waiting for her at the entrance to the school, and the two made good time to the shrine. The trip through the well was as normal for Theresa now as the walk to school each morning, and she didn't really pay much attention as the bright light of time-travel swallowed her and then dumped her in the bottom of the well, five hundred years in the past. She and Kagome were partway up the well walls when a shadow fell over them, prompting them both to look up. Inuyasha and Masuyo were both leaning over the edge of the well, watching their progress. Masuyo grinned and stretched his hand down to Theresa, who gratefully reached up and let him help pull her the rest of the way out of the well. Inuyasha waited until Kagome was a little closer to the top to help her out. By then, Masuyo and Theresa were too busy hugging and greeting each other to notice much of anything.

"Keh," Inuyasha said to Kagome. "Those two are so…so…"

"In love?" Kagome asked dryly. _And in denial about it_, she added silently to herself.

"So sappy," Inuyasha finally concluded. "It's sickening. They need to get a room."

Masuyo overheard that and fixed Inuyasha with a glare that once and for all convinced Kagome that the soul of Sesshoumaru still lived in the otherwise gentle being. "You can be so juvenile." Inuyasha stuck his tongue out, which just made the other man roll his eyes and sigh. Theresa just blushed.

"Well, it is Valentine's Day," she muttered.

"What's Valentine's Day?" Masuyo asked, his glare melting into a confused look that made him far too cute for his own good.

Theresa blinked. "It's…er…well…"

"It's a holiday where we come from, for celebrating relationships," Kagome said. "Friendship, family, romantic love -- everything really, but especially romantic love. In Japan, on Valentine's Day, girls give chocolates to the guys they like, and then a month later on White Day the guys give chocolates to the girls."

"The guys don't get to choose anything?" Inuyasha asked.

"Well," Kagome said thoughtfully, "I suppose a guy could choose to ignore a girl he didn't like very much…"

"It sounds complicated," Masuyo said.

Kagome shrugged. "It's not, really, once you get used to it."

"I actually think it's kind of scary," Theresa said. "I mean, what if you let a guy know you like him and then he doesn't like you?"

Masuyo was looking more and more perturbed by the minute. "Well, it can't be that bad, can it? I mean, you would just have to accept that and move on, right?" Kagome glared at him, but Theresa's expression was totally unreadable. The four stood there by the while for a while, surrounded by an awkward silence, which Kagome finally broke by suggesting that they head for the village. The others agreed, and Inuyasha and Masuyo quickly took the lead, talking amongst themselves.

"That didn't go over so well," Theresa whispered to her student.

"Don't worry. I'm sure everything will be fine. I'll talk to him more and make sure he really understands," Kagome whispered back.

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That night, while Theresa and Kaede focused on getting dinner ready, Kagome cornered Masuyo for a quick chat. "We need to talk."

"Er…about what?" he asked, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye before going back to fixing Kaede's bow, as she had asked.

"About Theresa. You care about her, right?"

Masuyo sighed and lowered the bow, closing his blue eyes for a moment before looking up at Kagome. "More than you could possibly imagine, Kagome. But, while I think she likes having me around…I don't know. I thought, after we shared that kiss a few months ago, that things would be different. But that was the first and last time we kissed, and I just don't know what to think now."

Kagome sighed and shook her head. "She cares about you too, Masuyo, so very much. But she's been hurt in the past, and badly. She's not going to put herself in a position to be hurt again. So I hope that, come White Day next month, you're able to show her just how much you care."

Masuyo blinked in confusion, but Kagome had already moved on to a new conversation with Inuyasha. He _knew_ Theresa had been hurt in the past -- she had told him that herself, after all. But women and humans were just so hard for him to read, and she was both. And he didn't want to hurt her more…what in the world was he supposed to do?

Kaede and Theresa finished their cooking preparations a short time later, and Theresa found herself free to do whatever she wanted while Kaede watched over their cooking food. She just sat for a bit, studying the fire, then got up, went to where her travel bag was sitting against the wall, and rummaged around until she found the two small packages she had brought for Masuyo. She knelt down beside him and took his hand, turning it palm-up and pressing the small boxes into it. "Happy Valentine's Day," she whispered, leaning close enough that only he could hear. But even though she whispered, he could still hear the nervousness in her voice.

"Thank you," he said, looking down at the boxes uncertainly. He wasn't sure if he should open them now or wait, but Theresa nudged his arm and gave him a reassuring smile, so he opened them and studied their contents carefully.

"These are chocolates," Theresa said, pointing to the first box. "They're my favorites, actually, but I wasn't sure if you would like them, so I got you some Japanese sweets too," she added, pointing to the second box. A sudden burst of courage overcame her and she gave his cheek a quick kiss. "Don't eat them too fast or you'll get sick," she said before leaving his side and resuming her duties as the second cook.

Masuyo blinked in confusion (today certainly was a confusing day), then looked down at his gifts and smiled. Well, that certainly cleared up his worries about how Theresa felt for him. Time to talk to Kagome again…he needed to know more about this White Day she had mentioned.


	10. Chapter 10

Ok, now that my internet has started working again (what IS it with technology hating me these days?), we have...a new chapter! Containing mild Sesshoumaru angst followed by a dose of sappiness so sugary-sweet you'll have to brush your teeth when you're done reading this. Yeah, I was in a very sappy mood when I typed this chapter. Anyway, enjoy, and remember to review! I love reading the reviews.

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**Chapter 10 -- One Month later**

Sesshoumaru grumbled a bit as he paced around by the well, looking up every few seconds to see if anything had changed. But the well just sat there, taunting him with its silence. The day was almost over, and there was still no sign of Theresa. Normally this wouldn't have bothered him too much, except for two things -- she hadn't shown up once in the past month, and today was the fabled White Day Kagome had told him about. He had put a lot of work into making today a special day for Theresa, and she wasn't here. He wasn't sure how he should feel. Hurt and angry were the top two emotions on his list at the moment, but he was also a bit worried. What if something had happened to her? There had to be an explanation for her absence.

He sighed and collapsed onto the ground beside the well, grinning a bit when he realized that he was sitting in the same place he had been when Theresa first appeared in his life. At the time, he had been very annoyed with the young human who had almost fallen on top of him. Now, he was grateful for the stroke of fate that had brought him to rest in that spot at that moment. After all, he might not have met her otherwise. She might have wondered off in the wrong direction and wound up dead, had he not been there when she first arrived.

At that moment, Sesshoumaru heard the sound of a soft thud in the well behind him, followed almost immediately by the sounds of someone struggling to climb up the well walls. He scrambled to his feet and leaned over the edge, hoping to see Theresa, and felt his heart sink when the only person he saw was Kagome. He sighed and closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and reached out his hand so she could grab it when she got high enough. The youkai-turned-human hauled her over the edge of the well, then stepped back, crossed his arms over his chest, and raised an eyebrow at her. Kagome dusted herself off, then looked up and gave him a tired smile.

"Hi."

"Kagome," he replied, giving her a brief nod.

"Theresa couldn't make it today."

"Obviously."

Kagome sighed. "Are you going to be angry at her without even hearing what

happened?"

Sesshoumaru's lip twitched, but he settled himself against the nearest tree and looked up at Kagome with a look that clearly said he was listening. "Might as well," he said.

The young woman nodded and sat down beside him, studying the well. "The past month at school has been crazy, even more so than usual," she said. "Theresa has had a lot to do, so she couldn't spare any time for anything much beyond school. I even heard there were a few nights where she brought changes of clothes with her to school and just slept in her office to save time. She had every intention of coming here today, though. But then, a couple of days ago, she got sick and had to be taken to the hospital."

"What's a hospital?"

"A place where you go to be taken care of when you're too sick to handle it yourself or to have your friends and family handle it. The people there are specially trained to take care of sick people." She glanced over at him and patted his shoulder, trying to keep him from panicking. "Don't worry, she's going to be fine. The doctors think the stress got to her, that's all. She hadn't been eating right, apparently."

"I want to see her," Sesshoumaru said firmly, rising smoothly to his feet and stalking over to the well. "How does this thing work?"

Kagome followed him and looked down into the well. "It doesn't seem to work for everyone," she said. "But for me, you just jump in and it takes you to the other time. Now, listen -- you can come back with me and I'll take you to see her, but we need to stop at my house first and get you some appropriate clothes for Tokyo, understand? And no complaining about it." Sesshoumaru nodded, so Kagome grabbed his hand. "Hang on tight. If you're connected to me, you should be able to make it no matter what." And with that, they jumped.

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When they arrived at the Higurashi shrine, Kagome dragged Sesshoumaru into her house and started digging through her father's old clothes for something that would both fit him and not look too out-of-date. He was going to stand out no matter what, might as well try to minimize that. Once she had him dressed in some jeans, a sweater, and some shoes, she helped him tie his hair up in a high ponytail so it would be out of the way and they headed for the hospital. As she had expected, Sesshoumaru garnered stares wherever they went. And why not? Kagome didn't like to admit it (since she was so used to thinking of him as an enemy) but Sesshoumaru was incredibly attractive in both his human and youkai forms. It was only natural that people would stare. Plus, the sight of what looked like a relatively normal young Japanese man staring at his surroundings as though he had never seen such things before attracted a lot of attention.

"Hey," Kagome whispered when they paused at a crosswalk, "I know this is all new to you, but could you keep the wild looking-around to a minimum? It's making people stare."

"Right," he said, stolidly staring straight ahead, only glancing to the side every so often to keep track of Kagome's whereabouts. The light finally changed, and she gave him a gentle nudge to get him to follow the crowd. The weaved in and out of people for a bit, crossed a few more roads, and finally arrived at the hospital. Kagome already knew where Theresa's room was, so she led Sesshoumaru into the elevator (that was a fun ride, trying to convince the youkai that the elevator was not going to eat him and was in fact doing exactly what it was supposed to do) and finally down a quiet hallway to Theresa's room.

Kagome stayed out of the way so that Sesshoumaru could visit Theresa uninterrupted. He stepped cautiously into the room, staring around at all the unfamiliar equipment and furnishings, then gingerly settled himself on the edge of her bed. Theresa was sleeping, and he didn't want to disturb her. That didn't stop him from gently brushing a few stray strands of her long brown hair away from her face or from placing a tender kiss on her forehead, though. He took her small hand in both of his own and sat there quietly, watching her, until she finally woke up about fifteen minutes after they arrived. She didn't seem to register her visitor's identity at first, but then her eyes focused on the familiar face and she smiled at him.

"What are you doing here?" she asked softly.

"Kagome brought me. I was worried about you. It's been so long since you last came to visit…"

"I know, I'm sorry. I wanted to come today, but…" she waved her free hand helplessly at the hospital room. "They say I should be able to leave by tomorrow, though, and things are finally dying down at school, so I can come next week."

"Good," Sesshoumaru said, sounding distinctly relieved. "I had a lot planned for today, you know. It would be a shame to let all that planning go to waste."

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The following weekend, Theresa was indeed able to make good on her promise, showing up at Kaede's hut early on the brightest, sunniest, and warmest day of the year so far. It was also the most snow-free day of the year so far, which suited Sesshoumaru just fine. His plans involved them being outdoors for much of the day anyway, and it would be much easier if the snow was gone (which was the case now).

He greeted her at the door of the hut, carrying a pack in one hand and obviously ready to go. Theresa laughed and dropped her overnight bag inside the door, said a quick hello to Kaede and her other friends, then followed the man she knew as Masuyo to the side of the hut. He had made arrangements to borrow Kaede's horse for the day, and after making sure his pack was secure he helped Theresa mount and then climbed up behind her. For the first time in a long time, he wished he had his old youkai powers back -- flying would be so much more efficient than walking or riding a horse. Then again, this had its perks too. Theresa seemed perfectly content to leave the travel arrangements to him and to just lean back against him while enjoying the ride.

They rode for a good while (both lost track of the exact amount of time, though) until they came to the spot Sesshoumaru had long ago selected for their outing -- a clearing on a cliff overlooking the valley where Kaede's village stood. They couldn't really see the village clearly from here, but they could see the hills on either side, the mountains in the distance, and the river meandering through the valley floor. The sun was out today, turning the river into a blue and silver ribbon below them and making the ground comfortably warm and dry. Sesshoumaru spread the blanket he had brought anyway, then set about laying out the food he had spent most of the previous day and all of that morning preparing.

Theresa eyed the food suspiciously. "I didn't know we had that much in the entire village," she said.

"Well, like I said, I've been planning this for a while," Sesshoumaru replied, grinning up at her proudly. Theresa couldn't help but smile back, and she curled up beside him on the blanket to enjoy the veritable feast he had made. Indeed, though she had never really liked picnics back in her own time, Theresa had to admit that this one was a lot of fun. Then again, having a man like Masuyo feed you little bits of fish and vegetables and rice every so often would make just about any meal fun, she reflected. Sesshoumaru, for his part, was simply in awe over the whole situation. Just a few months ago, had anyone told him that he would be cuddling with a human like this (and enjoying every second of it to boot), they probably would have wound up dead. But this…this was heaven. Maybe his father had been on to something in his relationship with Izayoi.

With the food finished and the dishes packed away, they turned their attention to the serious business of more cuddling while admiring the view. Though neither of them were really sure how they got that way, they wound up with Sesshoumaru leaning back against their chosen shade tree with Theresa curled up in his lap, her head rested on his shoulder and his arms draped protectively around her.

"You realize I'm going to expect this every year from now on," she teased him.

"You can expect it every week if that's what you really want," he answered. "For you, I would willingly do it."

Theresa smiled and snuggled closer to him. "I think once a year is enough. Keeps it really special, you know."

He nodded, then tilted his head down a bit and gave her a questioning look. Theresa tilted her own face up to him and gave a brief nod, then closed her eyes as he kissed her for the second time. His arms tightened around her and she clung to him, tangling her fingers in his hair. They finally had to break the kiss for want of air, and Sesshoumaru turned his attention to trailing quick, light kisses up and down her neck, making her shiver and giggle a bit. He grinned, then gave her one final, tender kiss on her lips before pulling back enough to see her face.

"Theresa?" he said, lightly brushing his fingers over her cheek.

"Hmm?"

"I love you, so very much."

Theresa's mouth dropped open in surprise, but her surprise quickly turned to joy. "Oh Masuyo…" she breathed. "I love you too."


	11. Chapter 11

New chapter! Might be the last one for a couple of days...my internet isn't working right and it just seems to be getting worse. Sorry about that, but there's nothing I can do about it except be patient and hope they fix it soon :-( But in the meantime, you can have some fun with this chapter. Enjoy!

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**Chapter 11**

The start of the cherry blossom season a short time later also saw the start of a new phase in the relationship between Theresa and the man she called Masuyo. Shortly after Theresa had returned home following their belated White Day celebration, Sesshoumaru had decided to see if he could travel through the well one his own. After all, it was a simple enough thing to test -- jump into the well and see what would happen. And so he did, and in that way discovered that he too could travel through time using the well. So while Theresa continued her visits to the village on weekends, Sesshoumaru began his own mid-week trips to her time so he could visit her.

Of course, Theresa couldn't entertain him every minute that he was there, so she had to devise a plan for dealing with him. Her first course of action was to buy some modern clothes that he could wear. Her second course of action was to show him all of her favorite walking routes in the city, including the one she took to and from school every day. And her third course of action was to show him how to read maps, on which she highlighted those walking routes in one color and marked sights of interest in another. Once she was confident that he could find his way around on his own (she tried to buy him a mobile phone for emergencies but her efforts at getting him to work her very simple and basic phone failed miserably), she had no problem leaving him alone when she went to work. Well, she did have a problem with it, just not any problem that involved fears over him getting lost.

And so it was that, one particularly lovely morning in the first week of April, Theresa rolled out of bed and went about her morning routine as usual, doing her best not to wake the man sleeping on the extra futon laid out beside her own. She dressed, washed up, had a quick breakfast, and gathered her things, then knelt down beside Masuyo and lightly kissed his cheek before heading out the door to her job. Masuyo, for his part, slept until quite late that morning, then decided that it would be a shame to waste the rest of the day and headed out to explore modern Tokyo.

It was the day that would prove to be his downfall.

Sesshoumaru wandered the city alone, sometimes getting caught up in clumps of site-seers out to view the cherry blossoms. He paused in a park long enough to admire the blossoms himself, then checked the watch Theresa had given him and taught him how to read. He discovered that it was almost time for her to finish work and leave school, and that his location in the park was close to a particular part of the route she took to and from school each day. And so, he decided to surprise her, and began making his leisurely way out of the park to the nearest spot on her walking route.

He had arrived at the road and had turned in the direction of the school, intent on heading towards said school and meeting Theresa at some point along the way, when he heard a blood-curdling scream from farther up the path. Sesshoumaru didn't pause to think. He ran ahead, and rounded a corner, only to come to a screeching, terrified halt at the sight before him. Theresa, his beloved Theresa, her clothes an absolute mess, the contents of her book bag scattered everywhere, shoved up against the nearby wall and surrounded by a gang of five young men. Sesshoumaru didn't know who or what they were, nor did he really care. He just knew Theresa was in danger, and he had to do something about it.

"Hey!" he shouted, settling into a fighting stance. Though, what he could do against five men he didn't know.

"Masuyo!" Theresa wailed. That was a bad idea -- the man holding her against the wall loosened his grip just enough to slam her against the wall once more, causing her to yelp in pain.

"I said shut up, bitch!" he growled at her. "But look at this…some competition! Come on, boys, we'll take care of him first, and then get back to this little brat…"

Sesshoumaru's eyes darted between the men, sizing them all up. There was no way he could expect to take them all. Sure, even as Masuyo he was a good fighter, but this human form lacked much of his youkai strength and all of his special youkai skills. He didn't even have a sword! But then his eyes fell on Theresa again. She had slid down the wall and collapsed into a heap on the ground, where she was watching events unfold with a look of sheer horror plastered across her face. That face -- the loveliest sight Sesshoumaru had ever seen -- he had to do anything he could to protect her. He _would_ do anything he could to protect her. Even if it meant dying.

That realization gave him a freedom he hadn't had before, and he turned his attention back to the five men with a newfound resolve. He laughed, a deep, dark laugh completely lacking in humor. "You don't deserve to even look at her," he declared. And with that, he leapt into action.

The change wasn't immediately noticeable to him. He hadn't been paying attention to how close the men really were to him, but if he had he would have known that no normal human could have closed the distance between them in a single leap. But then, Sesshoumaru was no normal human. For just a moment after he made the leap, time seemed to slow to a crawl. He felt as though he was suspended in the air, floating towards the attackers with more than enough time to mount any attack he pleased. The moment his feet left the ground, he felt a change come over himself, and could have sword he saw a bright white light flash before his eyes. Then, a voice filled Sesshoumaru's head, a voice he had only heard twice before but would recognize anywhere. _Congratulations. You have finally learned your lesson_.

And then he was among them, and in an instant they were coming at him from all sides. For just a moment, Sesshoumaru held his hands before his face in a defensive stance, but that moment was enough time for him to glance at his wrists. His eyes widened in shock when he noticed a set of familiar marks that had been missing for months -- the magenta stripes that slashed across the outside of his wrists, marks of his status as ant inu-daiyoukai.

"Hmph," Sesshoumaru grunted. "Insects." And with all the ease of a move practiced perfectly hundreds of thousands of times, he snapped his right arm out and unleashed a brilliant, deadly light whip attack. The whip shot from his fingertips and cut his attackers down in an instant. They didn't even have time to scream. After taking a quick look around to make sure he had really defeated all of the attackers, he turned his attention to his badly-traumatized love. "Are you alright?" he asked, taking a step towards her.

But whatever reaction he had expected, what he got certainly wasn't it. Theresa had pulled herself up against the wall and was now backing up as quickly as her battered and bruised body would allow. "Stay back," she said, her voice shaking with fear.

Sesshoumaru blinked in confusion. "Why? It's me."

"I don't know what the hell you are," she spat, "but you sure as hell aren't my Masuyo. I said stay back!" But he took one step closer, and the instant he did, Theresa let out a great shriek even louder than the one that had brought him here to begin with. Almost instantly, a new group appeared around the corner, led by Kagome and her friends. Kagome raced forward and grabbed Theresa by the shoulders to steady her, then handed her off to several of the other students with promises that she would be safe and would get to the bottom of things on her own. Once the others were out of sight, she grabbed Sesshoumaru's wrist and started dragging him towards the Higurashi shrine.

"Listen to me, and listen carefully. I don't know what just happened here, but you need to go before the police arrive and take you in for questioning. Don't worry about Theresa, I'll make sure she's taken care of. We can sort this issue later."

"But --"

"No buts! There's no time for that. Now, get back to the shrine and go back through the well, as fast as you can. I have to go take care of Theresa." And with that, Kagome too was gone.

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Kagome sighed and helped Theresa get settled on the bed. Upon hearing what had happened to the young teacher, the other members of the Higurashi family had insisted that she come stay with them for a few days. While Kagome was glad to do whatever she could to help Theresa, she was sure the next few days were going to be full of tension.

She hadn't expected it to start so soon, though.

"How long did you know?"

"Eh?"

Theresa looked up at the teenager, eyes full of fire. "How long did you know? About Masuyo, I mean?"

"What makes you think I knew?"

"You didn't seem at all surprised by his appearance. And…I don't know, there's something about the way you acted around him…"

Kagome sighed, rubbed her hands over her face, and knelt on the floor before Theresa. "It's…well…I've known for a while. Since a few days after I met Masuyo, actually. See, he's really Inuyasha's older half-brother…but shouldn't he be the one to explain this to you?"

Theresa stared stoically ahead. "I couldn't even trust him to tell me the truth before this happened," she said, her voice sounding dead even to her own ears. "Why should I trust him to tell me now?"

"If you understood more about Sesshoumaru --"

"I don't _want_ to understand more about Sesshoumaru!" Theresa shrieked. "I want my Masuyo back!"

Kagome leaned back in shock, mouth open and eyes wide. She had never expected an outburst like that from her normally mild-mannered English teacher. Theresa could certainly act much younger than her age at times (especially when it had come to her relationship with Masuyo -- a result of being a social outcast for much of her life, perhaps?) but this was the first time she had actually said something so childish and petulant. The Japanese teenager sighed. "He's not coming back. I'm sorry." Patting Theresa's knee in what she hoped would be a comforting manner, she said, "I can tell you more about Sesshoumaru and what happened later, if you want. But I think you should rest now. This was a really bad day for you." And with that, she stood and slipped from the room, leaving a sniffling Theresa behind to burst into tears and sob out her despair alone.


	12. Chapter 12

Thanks to all of my wonderful reviewers, this story has officially passed my last record for number of reviews. Yay! I know, there are stories out there with hundreds and even thousands of reviews, but I'm still excited. Anyway! Here we have Sesshoumaru angst and Theresa confusion...why? Because I'm evil. Enjoy, and please review!

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**Chapter 12**

Sesshoumaru paced around in front of the well, eyes fixed on its dark depths, as though expecting Theresa to appear at any moment. But of course, there was no sign of her. Inuyasha, Sango, Miroku, Kaede, Shippou, and Kirara stood in a clump off to one side, eyes warily following the pacing daiyoukai. Nobody was certain how much of his old temper had returned along with his youkai skills and typical appearance (though Sango had pointed out that he still had both hands, just as he had as Masuyo). Every so often, Sesshoumaru would stop his pacing and lean over the edge of the well, hands gripping the wood rim hard enough to make the wood splinter. Then he would sigh, shake his head, and continue his pacing.

"Dammit, stop pacing, you're making me dizzy," Inuyasha finally grumbled.

"Shut up," Sesshoumaru replied bitterly. "Just shut up."

"She's not coming back. You scared her too badly."

"And just how was I supposed to know I would turn back into a youkai the moment I admitted I'd be willing to die for her? Nobody told me the change would be instant."

Inuyasha snorted. "You should have just told her right from the beginning that you're a youkai. Then this whole issue would have been avoided."

"Inuyasha --" Sango began, but she didn't have time to finish. Sesshoumaru had closed the distance between himself and his younger half-brother in a single leap, grabbing a fistful of the hanyou's clothes and slamming him into the nearest tree.

"Do _not_ act like you know everything," Sesshoumaru spat. "I don't have the time or the patience to deal with you today."

"Careful there," a new voice interjected. "Or we'll have to turn you into a hanyou next."

Sesshoumaru whirled and glared at the source of the voice, but didn't bother doing anything else. Attacking a ghost would be pointless, after all. "Stay out of this, moth."

"Sesshoumaru," his father scolded. Menoumaru just rolled his eyes and let out a great heaving sigh, his antennae bobbing as his head dipped a bit.

"What?" the young inu-youkai snapped. "Do you really expect me to take this calmly?"

"Well, given your past track record with handling life changes, I would say not," Inu-no-Taishou replied dryly. "But really, you need to calm down a little and try to be rational about this."

"How in the world am I supposed to be rational about this?" Sesshoumaru was shouting by now, making the living beings near him wince and back away. The ghosts just stayed where they were -- after all, nothing he did could hurt them. "She doesn't trust me anymore."

"Because of a mistake you made," Tsukuyomaru pointed out. "Inuyasha is right. You should have told her the truth if you wanted to avoid something like this."

Sesshoumaru wilted a bit. "So what am I supposed to do now?"

"Be patient," Hoshiyomi said. "But also realize that it's entirely possible you've lost her for good."

There was a time when such a suggestion would have been met with an icy glare, at best, and sudden death for the one who dared mention it at worst. But right now, neither option (or much of anything in between) appealed to Sesshoumaru, who simply slumped to the ground and hung his head, fighting back the pain threatening to overcome him.

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Theresa blinked in the darkness of the bedroom, wondering what could have woken her up at this time of night. Despite her emotional turmoil, she had finally managed to fall asleep sometime after dinner. Apparently, it was too much to hope she would stay that way. Then again, she reflected, this might actually be better -- it would keep her from dreaming of Masuyo, at the very least. And after a few nights of this, she would be too exhausted to dream while she slept.

She sighed and pushed the heavy blankets aside, then sat up and looked out the window. The night was cloudy, though, so she had no hope of seeing even the moon. While she pondered the pros and cons of getting up and raiding the Higurashi family kitchen for a midnight snack, something she had never expected happened. Slowly, as though uncertain that it would be welcome, a dim glow appeared in her room. She focused on the glowing spot, which soon reached its brightest and took the form of a kneeling, glowing, transparent man. His long silver-white hair was tied up in a ponytail, his body covered in heavy spiked armor, and a pair of fluffy pelts hung from his shoulders and pooled around his feet as he knelt. He looked up and her and gave her a small smile that caused her heart to skip a beat -- how many times had Masuyo given her the exact same smile?

"I'm not sure if this is the best idea I've ever had," the ghost said, "but I'm the kind of father who likes to spoil his children terribly, and my oldest son is rather distraught at the moment."

"Er…and your oldest son would be…?"

"Sesshoumaru. Or Masuyo, as you know him." The ghost stood and took a step towards the bed, then sat on its edge. Theresa raised an eyebrow when she noticed that he didn't even make an indentation in the sheets. "It's unfortunate, really," he continued. "Sesshoumaru loves you dearly, you know. Which is quite a miracle, he spent all of his life until recently hating all humans."

"If he loves me so much then why didn't he even tell me the truth?" Theresa muttered, averting her eyes and staring instead at the wall.

"Well, would you have believed him if he had told you the truth?" her ghostly visitor asked, leaning forward and bit to look at her face. "For what it's worth, I do think he should have told you. But you really can't fault the reasoning behind his choice to keep his true identity to himself."

Theresa looked up the ghost. "So, if he's really a youkai, how did he end up as a human to begin with?'

The ghost stretched and yawned. "It's a long story. The short version is that a bunch of us, including me, decided that his human-hating had gone too far, so we found a way to make him live as a human as a means of teaching him a lesson."

"And the key to regaining his youkai form was falling in love with a human," Theresa said, nodding slowly. That made sense, sort of.

"Actually, no. The key to regaining his human form was coming to care for a human enough that he would be willing to die for that human. There are a lot of possible relationships that could have brought that about. It just happened that he fell in love with you."

"Well, it's over now," she said bitterly.

"Is it? Is it really?" the ghost asked. "Sesshoumaru and Masuyo are the same person. Falling in love with one is the same as falling in love with the other."

"But he _lied_ to me," she insisted.

"And I agree that he shouldn't have. But let me ask you this -- do you really think you couldn't work past that? Do you really believe that the best way to handle this is to just let your love for him die? I think, in the end, you would just be hurting yourself if you did that."

Theresa's head jerked up at those words and she gasped in surprise. This ghost had a good point. Perhaps she should try to go back and talk to Masuyo -- no, Sesshoumaru -- again. Perhaps they could patch things up.

She was pulled out of her reverie by the realization that the ghost was fading. "Wait! Where are you going?"

"My time in the world of the living is always limited," he said, giving her a sad smile. "And besides, I've done what I came here to do. The rest is up to you, and to my son." And with that, he was gone, leaving behind a darkness so complete that Theresa had to wonder if he had ever really been there to begin with.


	13. Chapter 13

So, in this chapter, stuff happens, and you have to read to find out what :p Yes, I know. I'm an evil authoress. Enjoy, review, and (barring sudden internet death, computer crashes, and all other technological woes that might befall me) there will be another chapter tomorrow!

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**Chapter 13**

Theresa spent most of the rest of that night pondering her conversation with the ghost of Sesshoumaru's father. Finally, just as the sky began turning pink with the approaching sunrise, she made a decision -- she was going to take one more trip through the well and see if there was even the tiniest possibility that she could patch things up with the man she loved. So what if his hair had turned silver, his eyes had turned gold, and he had suddenly developed (or regained) the ability to shoot deadly light whips out of his fingers? If the ghost was to be believed, not much else had changed. And if that was the case…well, if that was the case, there might still be hope for their relationship.

Unfortunately, events conspired to keep her from making an immediate return to the past. In the end, though, that was good, because it gave her time to think things through more and decide how she was going to approach the subject. And then, before she knew it, it was Golden Week, and she had an entire stretch of seven days to do whatever she wanted. By then, Theresa had moved out of the Higurashi house and back into her small apartment, which actually made packing easier. Her things weren't so scattered around (there weren't too many places they could go in a place where the biggest room resembled a large walk-in closet in size and did triple duty as the sitting, dining, and sleeping room), so it only took half an hour to pack a bag. And then, finally, she was ready to go. She made the by now very familiar trek to the Higurashi shrine and went straight for the well house, sliding one half of the door open, stepping inside, and shutting it behind her before heading down the stairs and vaulting over the side of the well. Once again, the now very familiar magic grabbed her and pulled her through time, depositing her none too gently on the bottom of the well five hundred years in the past. Theresa made sure her pack was settled comfortably on her back before grasping some of the vines that grew along the well walls and hauling herself out and turning towards Kaede's village. Time to go visit a youkai.

There was just one thing she forgot -- Sesshoumaru didn't normally live in Kaede's village. He had only lived there in his guise as Masuyo because he wasn't accepted anywhere else. And so it was that, upon arriving at the village and asking where he was, she was informed that nobody had seen him in weeks. He had simply vanished.

Theresa spent that first night in the village moping around and generally making everyone uncomfortable. Dinner that night was a silent affair, with only the crackling of the hut's fire to break the silence. And then, just before bedtime, Inuyasha decided that he had had enough.

"You're annoying me," he said quite bluntly to the upset human.

"What?" she asked, confused. Everyone else looked up to watch the exchange.

"I said, you're annoying me, sitting there in the corner moping about my ass of a brother."

"Inuyasha!" Sango scolded, but he ignored her.

Theresa glared at him. "You have no idea how I feel right now. Leave me alone."

"No! What kind of woman sits around and mopes? You want something, you have to go out and get it!" he exclaimed, voice coming closer and closer to an all-out yell with every word.

"Well, I'm so _very_ sorry I'm not a perfect woman!" Theresa replied shrilly. "What am I suppose to do?"

Inuyasha climbed to his feet, grabbed her by the shoulder of her shirt, and hauled her to her own feet as well. He gathered her bag in his other hand, dragged her to the door, and shoved both her and the bag outside. "You go find him! And don't come back until you do!"

For a long moment, the two had a face-off in the hut's door. The air between them crackled with angry tension. Then, Theresa picked her pack up, threw it over her back, and with a snorted "Hmph!" of annoyance, turned on her heel and stalked away from the hut. Inuyasha waited until she was gone, then wilted a bit in relief.

"Are you sure that's such a good idea?" Miroku asked as the hanyou resettled himself in his usual spot against the wall.

"No," Inuyasha replied. "But nothing's going to happen if she just sits around feeling sorry for herself. And Sesshoumaru isn't going to show up here anytime soon."

"Yeah, but you could have at least waited until the morning to throw her out," Sango pointed out.

Inuyasha snorted. "Keh. She'll be fine."

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As it turned out, others in the village had heard the argument between Theresa and Inuyasha, and one of the neighbors had caught up with her on the outskirts of the village to offer her a place to stay for the night. She had gratefully accepted, not relishing the idea of beginning her search for Sesshoumaru in the dark. But she woke up shortly after sunrise, gathered her things, and headed out on her quest. She had no idea where she was going to go, or how long she would be gone, or whether or not she would have any success. She just knew she had to do this.

Her first day of wandering yielded no results, and she went to sleep under a tree feeling rather dejected. Her second day of wandering was much the same as the first, though wetter and more miserable as the result of a storm around noon. Then finally, on the third day, she found signs of life -- a camp filled with people. But not normal people, she realized as she got closer to them. Were they youkai? She couldn't really tell, having never learned most of the ways to tell humans and youkai apart. Some were quite obvious, of course, but others…well, she would have to be careful around this group anyway.

"Oi! Who are you?" a man shouted at her as she approached the camp.

How to answer that question? "Nobody special," she called back. "But I'm looking for someone."

"Kouga isn't here. You need to go farther into the mountains to find him," a second voice said.

"Er…no, I'm not looking for anyone named Kouga," Theresa said.

"Ayame, then," the first man said, "She's busy, but you can wait here for her." He pointed to a nearby rock, indicating that Theresa could sit there.

"Right. Thanks," she said, settling herself gingerly on the rock and wondering just what this Ayame woman was going to do to help her. Ah well. It gave her a good excuse to stop for a rest.

As it turned out, Ayame wasn't just busy, she was nowhere to be seen until sunset that day. By then, Theresa's butt was numb from sitting on a rock pretty much all day, and she had run out of ways to entertain herself without actually getting up and going anywhere. She was about to just give up and ask for directions for the nearest human village (for she had managed to figure out that her hosts were indeed youkai) when Ayame finally returned.

"Who's our guest?" the young youkai woman asked the people who came out to greet her.

"She didn't say," Theresa's greeter said. "Just that she was looking for someone that wasn't Kouga, so we told her to wait for you."

"Right," Ayame said dryly. "Did you ask if she was actually looking for me?"

"Um…"

She sighed. "That's what I thought." Turning her attention to Theresa and propping her hands on her hips, she said, "Well, I'm Ayame, and I lead this pack. What can I do for you?"

Theresa slid off her rock and gave Ayame a quick bow. "Ayame-san, I'm Theresa. And, well, I don't think the person I'm looking for is here." She fished around in her bag until she found the small framed picture of herself and Masuyo that she had brought. It wasn't the best picture in the world -- they had taken it in a little photo booth in a Tokyo shopping center, and Masuyo had spent most of the photo session convinced that he was loosing parts of his soul to the unfamiliar machine -- but it was all she had, and it meant a lot to her. She held the picture out to Ayame and pointed to Masuyo. "Have you seen anyone like him? He looks a little different now. His hair should be silver, and his eyes are yellow, and --"

"I know him," Ayame interrupted, nodding sagely. "That's Sesshoumaru. He came by late yesterday to collect Rin and Jaken. Didn't seem too happy that they had been left here while he was dealing with his little problem, but he didn't try to kill anyone either. I guess we should be grateful for small blessings like that."

_Rin? Jaken? Good skies, what else didn't he tell me?_ Theresa thought to herself. Out loud, she said, "So they left here last night?"

"No, this morning. Rin was tired from running around all day, so they waited until dawn to leave."

"Which way did they go?"

Ayame pointed right into the setting sun, which had turned her already red hair into a blaze of fire and which tinted her outstretched hand and arm with red and gold. "Directly west," she said. "But who knows if they stayed on the path. Sesshoumaru can fly, after all."

Theresa nodded, then sighed. "I suppose it's too late for me to go after him now, isn't it?"

Ayame nodded. "It would be too dangerous for a lone human. You can stay here tonight. There's plenty of food and plenty of room for a guest."

That night, Theresa slept peacefully in the shelter provided by the wolf clan, and her dreams were filled with images of a happy reunion with Sesshoumaru. Tomorrow would be the day to catch up to him, and she _would_ catch up, she could feel it. All she had to do tonight was rest, relax, and gather her strength for the grueling day ahead.


	14. Chapter 14

Here I am, back again with your daily dose of drama and mild angst. Hmm, and a bit of suspense, too, I suppose. Enjoy!

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**Chapter 14**

She left the wolf youkai camp early in the morning, which turned out to be just what the wolves had wanted anyway. While they didn't mind her company, they were ready to move back up into the mountains, and they didn't particularly want to move with a human in the way. So after a quick but filling breakfast, Theresa took her leave of them and headed off to the west, following the same trail Ayame had indicated Sesshoumaru and his companions had followed a short time ago.

The trip started off fine and peaceful, with Theresa cheerfully humming to herself as she walked. But the farther she went along the path, the deeper she found herself in an unfamiliar forest, and she had to admit that that wasn't fun at all. Why had she gone on this trip alone, again? Right, because…well, because Inuyasha had thrown her out of the hut, and because (as much as she didn't like agreeing with the arguments of anyone who would throw her out of a hut) this was really something only she could do. She paused for a quick and lonely lunch beside a small stream in the forest, then gathered her bag once more and headed off, still keeping to the west.

She hadn't gone very far when she realized she was being followed. Theresa threw a few quick looks over her shoulders, but she couldn't see anything. Still, the feeling of being watched by who knew how many eyes, of being trailed by goodness only knew how many strange and possibly dangerous beings, was unshakeable. And so, she did the only thing she could think of in the situation, seeing as she had no weapons and no self-defense training -- she began to walk faster. But the sensation of being watched remained. Theresa looked around frantically, trying to see who or what was watching her, walking faster and faster as she went. And then, behind her, a twig snapped. Normally such a thing wouldn't bother her, but in her state of heightened paranoia, the twig snapping was like a cannon blast right next to her head. Without a moment's thought, she dropped her bag and bolted.

Two things made that a bad idea. The first was that Theresa was terribly out of shape and had never been much for running anyway. The second was that her taking off appeared to be the signal for her followers to finally show themselves, launching themselves out of the shadows in an attempt to catch the fleeing human. Theresa got one look at the creatures and instantly wished she hadn't -- they were big, hulking things, with skin a muddy grey-green color, a multitude of eyes, and more claws and fangs than any normal being would know what to do with. They were big, and they were fast, and they intended to make a snack out of Theresa (though, how much of a snack she could possibly make for the seven or eight creatures chasing her she didn't know or care). Fortunately, her small size relative to them gave her the advantage of being hard to catch, so she gave up on trying to outrun them and instead started dodging this way and that, weaving in and out of trees and around bushes and rocks --

-- until she came to the edge of a cliff.

_Well, this is brilliant,_ she thought to herself. _What a marvelous choice of ways to go: be eaten by monsters or jump off a cliff. Dammit, WHY didn't I take those karate lessons when I had the chance?_ Theresa looked around frantically, searching for something -- anything -- that would give her a fighting chance, or at least delay the inevitable. She found a large branch, longer than her arm and so thick that her fingers didn't fit all the way around it, and decided that it would make a good weapon. Which it would have, had it not been rotted enough to fall apart when she tried to pick it up. The other branches lying about were really too short or thin to make good weapons, and all the rocks around her were too big for her to pick up. The monsters advanced, grunting out horrible, gurgling laughs, slowly driving their victim back towards the edge of the cliff. Theresa backed up, eyes darting between the monsters in search of any possible means of escape, but it was no use. So she did the only other thing she could think of. She twisted just enough to look behind herself and took a good look down the cliff face, hoping to find a ledge farther down that she could jump to or some sort of hand holds she could use to climb down, but there wasn't anything. If she fell, it was going to be a long, straight trip to the ground. Her heel reached the edge of the cliff and a bit of the ground beneath it crumbled and fell away, leaving about an inch of her foot sticking out over the empty air.

Then one of the monsters roared and lunged for her.

Theresa jumped in shock, as any normal person would do, and tumbled right over the edge of the cliff.

She quickly discovered that all the clichés about seeing bright lights and having your life flash before your eyes were utterly untrue. The only light Theresa saw was the same sunlight that had guided her through the forest, and the only visions passing before here eyes were the blurs of grey, brown, and green that made up the cliffs and trees she passed on her journey down. She close her eyes against the sight, not really wanting to know when she was getting closer to the ground, and did what she could to prepare herself for her impending demise.

Her first indication that something was amiss with said impending demise was the sudden feeling of…were those arms?…wrapped firmly around her waist. The second indication was that she suddenly stopped falling and instead began rising. Well, this was

an interesting development. Sheer curiosity got the better of her, and she cracked her eyes a bit to see what was going on. They widened in sudden shock at the sight that confronted her -- a white kimono, a big fluffy pelt, and a curtain of silver-white hair, framing what was to her, at that moment, the most beautiful face in the world.

Sesshoumaru had come for her.

He landed gracefully behind a particularly large boulder, where he set Theresa before darting off without a word. She worked her way around the boulder to a spot where she could watch the ensuing battle and still be protected. The inu-daiyoukai had by now drawn one of the two swords normally strapped to his side and was going after the multi-eyed monsters with great gusto and a surprising level of grace. Had he not been leaving a trail of blood and destruction behind as he went, Theresa would have sworn that he was dancing rather than fighting.

Finally, the last monster was vanquished, leaving a victorious (if somewhat blood-

spattered) Sesshoumaru standing in the midst of the corpses. He surveyed the scene calmly for a second, then cleaned the blood from his sword, tucked it back into his sash, and turned towards the forest. Theresa watched, feeling very much like she was in a trance, as he quietly left the scene of his battle and padded off into the edge of the forest. He was leaving…without even saying a word…she couldn't let him go, she just couldn't…but she was rooted to the spot, unable to move an inch…

"Human girls," a voice said behind her. "So willing to throw away their best chances at making things right."

"Quiet, Menoumaru," a more familiar voice said. "I didn't bring you along to heckle."

Theresa turned to see the speakers and found herself once again facing the ghost of Sesshoumaru's father. He was surrounded by a few other ghosts, including one who had folded his arms over his chest and looked rather put out (she assumed that was the one called Menoumaru). "He didn't even ask how I've been," she pointed out.

"Well, Sesshoumaru was never one for small talk," the Inu no Taishou said dryly. "It is entirely possible that he believes you are still angry with him…in which case, you have to be the one to let him know otherwise."

"Better do it soon," Menoumaru said, antennae bobbing and swaying gently as he moved his head to look past Theresa. "You know, before he takes off and you have no hope of catching him."

Theresa turned away from them and stared into the woods, where she could still make out a few bits of white here and there indicating Sesshoumaru's presence. She really didn't want to run after him -- to do that would, in her mind, indicate that she was desperate, and she had always been raised to believe that a man was not required for a full and happy life. On the other hand, this could very well be her only chance, her last chance, to make things right with him. To just throw away this chance would be like throwing away the love they had shared. And that just wasn't right.

Without even thinking about it, she scrambled from behind the rock and raced towards the rapidly leaving youkai, almost slipping in a puddle of monster blood before managing to make it past the battle scene and into the woods herself. She was close enough now to see how his hair seemed to float in the light breeze, how it rippled the sleeves of his kimono and rustled the hair on his pelt. Theresa pushed herself, somehow closing the distance between them (oh, the things adrenaline could do for a person), then reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his kimono.

Sesshoumaru came to an abrupt halt and turned, mouth slightly open and eyes wide in surprise. Theresa let out a great sigh of relief and wilted a bit as she tried to catch her breath, hand still clutching the bit of kimono she had grabbed.

"Yes?" the youkai asked, his voice betraying no emotion.

Theresa panted a bit, then looked up at him. "Just where do you think you're going without even saying hello?"

"Wherever I feel like," he replied. "Though I strongly suspect my charges require food, which does limit my options."

She frowned. "So if you're just going to leave me behind…why did you come rescue me in the first place?"

Sesshoumaru stared down at her, his face as free from emotion as his voice, but inside he was in turmoil. Theresa, standing right here, firing questions at him as though this was a perfectly normal thing. What in the world was she thinking, behaving like this after she had so clearly rejected him? But he had to admit, she had a point. What _was_ he doing

going out of his way to rescue her?

"I…really don't know. For the sake of old times, I suppose."

Theresa let go of his kimono and planted her hands on her hips, frowning up at him. "Why does it have to be for the sake of old times? Why not for the sake of now, or for the sake of the future?"

Sesshoumaru raised an eyebrow. "It's a little late for that, don't you think?"

"So what, you're just going to give up because of some stupid mistake?"

"It's not like that --"

"Then what _is_ it like?" Theresa exclaimed, feeling extremely frustrated. "Look, Masuyo -- Sesshoumaru -- whatever your name is -- this sort of thing doesn't happen every day, I admit. I mean, most people don't expect to have their…their…boyfriends turn back into youkai before their eyes like that. And I really would have appreciated it if you had trusted me enough to tell me the truth. But just because you look different now doesn't mean you're a different person, does it? There must be some way we can work through this, right?"

The inu-daiyoukai studied her with apparent boredom. Finally, he stirred and sighed and said, "You should go back to the village. I'm sure Kaede and the others will be worried about you." And with that, he turned, took a few steps away from her, and then flew off in a ball of light. Theresa stared after him, hands balled into fists at her sides and cheeks stained with tears.


	15. Chapter 15

In this chapter, Sesshoumaru has issues, Kagome has a plan, and Theresa...well, you'll see. Enjoy!

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**Chapter 15**

Somehow, Theresa made it back to the village in time to go through the well and be back at school as scheduled following Golden Week. But her confrontation with the emotionless Sesshoumaru had taken its toll on her, and even the students who had no idea about her secret life of time-travel and falling in love noticed that she seemed even more worn out and tense than usual. As each weekend came, Kagome would try to convince Theresa to go back through the well and visit the rest of her friends in the past, but Theresa refused. Trips through the well had too many memories for her, and each memory was like a knife through her heart right now.

For her part, Kagome desperately wanted to do something for her teacher. She just didn't know what. The weeks went by, May became June and June rapidly disappeared as July approached. And then, things conspired to give Kagome the most brilliant idea since her White Day idea from before.

In mid-June, Kagome made her usual weekend trip through the well, and upon arriving in the past she looked up to see what sort of weather she would be climbing into. She noticed a shadow above the well, but couldn't tell who or what it was. Cautiously, she began to climb, and when she was almost to the top she was finally able to look up and see who had caused the shadow -- Sesshoumaru, his arms resting in the edge of the well and his head resting on his folded arms, was blinking down at her with a most confused look in his face. He finally unfolded his arms, stood, and leaned over the edge of the well to offer her his hand. Kagome gratefully accepted his help. Once out of the well, she sat down and leaned back against its wooden sides to rest for a bit before heading down to the village. Sesshoumaru remained silent and resumed his position, golden eyes fixed on the dark depths of the well.

"Are you waiting for her?" Kagome asked. Sesshoumaru nodded. "I don't think she's coming this week either," she said. Sesshoumaru blinked. "I mean, she's really sad, you know. She did try to make things better." He was silent. "The least you could do is try to meet her half-way, for crying out loud," Kagome said, getting very annoyed with the stubborn youkai.

Sesshoumaru turned to look at her. "What could she possibly want with me now?"

Kagome gave him a look that clearly said she though he had lost his mind. "She loves you. What do you _think_ she wants with you? I mean, seriously, did you stop loving her when you stopped being Masuyo?"

"No…"

"Then stop moping here and _tell her that_," she said firmly. "She's not going to come back here, it hurts her too much because she thinks you don't care. But if you seek her out and tell her the truth -- all of it -- you can regain her trust…and you two can have a chance."

Sesshoumaru sighed. "I can't live like you and my brother, you know. Only seeing her on weekends, and then not even being sure of that."

"Well, that's something you two need to deal with. Actually, I think Theresa would be happy to live in this time if she had the choice."

"Really?"

"Yes."

Sesshoumaru pondered that new information, a thoughtful look crossing his face. "Well…"

"Listen, you don't have to make a decision right now," Kagome said. She sounded much less annoyed. "But you have to decide eventually." It was then that the idea hit her. "Hey…you know…yes, that would be perfect."

"What would?"

"You should come see her during Tanabata! The Star Festival…a time for making wishes and celebrating the meeting of the celestial lovers…" she sighed happily. "Theresa likes Tanabata, and I bet I know what her wish this year is going to be. It would be perfect! But you need something nicer than this to wear," she added sternly, pointing to Sesshoumaru's red-and-white kimono. "Tanabata is a big festival. You better dress up."

"Er --"

"Don't worry, I'll arrange everything," Kagome continued, waving her hand as though to dismiss his worries. "Come on, we need to go talk to Kaede. What color do you want your new clothes to be?"

Sesshoumaru shook his head as he climbed to his feet and followed Kagome down to the village. He really didn't care what he wore (he just wasn't that kind of person), but he already knew what he would choose. Theresa had fallen in love with him as Masuyo. Anything he could do to show her that Masuyo still lived in him would be good. And wearing Masuyo's favorite colors might be just the thing.

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Of course, talking about this marvelous plan and actually implementing it were two different things. In the end, Kagome wound up confiscating Sesshoumaru's blue haori from his time as Masuyo and bringing it back to Tokyo with her, where making a new and improved version became her all-consuming task. She found a pattern that was the right size, acquired some nice new material appropriate for a haori (and in the most amazing shade of dark blue-grey, too), and enlisted her friends to help her actually make and decorate the item. Though she didn't say anything about Sesshoumaru being a youkai, and in fact called him "Masuyo" around her friends, she was able to tell them her plan. Ayumi, Yuka, and Eri threw themselves into the plot with all the excitement of people desperate to see a real fairytale ending. Houjo-kun needed more convincing, but in the end he too agreed to help however he could. And so it was that each day after school for the last two weeks of June, Kagome and her friends would take over the Higurashi family sitting room and work feverishly on the new haori until it was time for the others to go home. Kagome would then eat dinner, race through her homework, and throw herself back into completing the haori. Time was of the essence.

And then, on July third, it was finished. Kagome and her friends laid the freshly-completed haori out on the floor and stepped back to admire their handiwork. The lovely blue material -- something kind of silky, though Kagome wasn't sure exactly what it was -- seemed to let off a faint glow in the sitting room's light. The left shoulder, the area over the lower-right hip, and parts of the sleeves had been decorated with delicate white flowers, just like the ones on Sesshoumaru's red and white kimono (except that there were more of them on the haori). It was, as far as Kagome was concerned, perfect. She just hoped Sesshoumaru would actually come through and agree to wear it to a modern Tanabata celebration.

"It's so pretty," Eri breathed, staring down at their handiwork.

"Yeah, it is," Houjo admitted, head cocked to one side as he studied the haori. "So, who's going to wear it again?"

"Theresa's boyfriend!" Ayumi exclaimed, a near-rapturous look on her face as she thought about this. "Oh, I hope they stay together. You said they're on the verge of breaking up, right Kagome?"

Kagome rubbed the back of her neck and gave a small, nervous laugh, but was spared the need to answer by Souta poking his head into the sitting room and announcing that dinner was ready. Yuka helped Kagome fold the haori and tuck it into a medium-sized box, then they went to have dinner. As Kagome ate her curry, her thoughts turned to the young English teacher probably eating her dinner alone and to the youkai, five hundred years in the past, who had agreed to her crazy scheme. She hoped she wouldn't let either of them down.

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Finally, July seventh arrived, the day of Tanabata. The neighborhood was covered with colorful streamers and decorations and many more people that usual were walking around in traditional clothes. Kagome couldn't really enjoy much of anything, though. She was far too worried about making sure her plan would succeed. That day, after finishing her day's tasks but before the festivities swung into high gear, she grabbed the box with the new haori and headed off for Kaede's village, where Sesshoumaru had promised to meet her. For a terrible moment upon arriving at the village, she was certain Sesshoumaru had backed down. He was nowhere to be seen, and the villagers were going about their lives as thought nothing out of the ordinary was taking place. Not a good sign in Kagome's eyes. But once she stepped into Kaede's hut, all of her fears were laid to rest. There was Sesshoumaru, looking somewhat sour and skittish but otherwise fairly normal. Well, as normal as he ever looked, anyway. He had already changed into most of his Masuyo outfit, with only the haori left to complete the look.

Kagome grinned at him. "Ready to go win Theresa back?"

"No. In fact, I feel very strongly that I'm about to be sick."

"You shouldn't be so nervous," Sango chided from the far corner of the hut. "It's all going to be fine in the end."

Sesshoumaru shot her a bitter look, but Sango wisely chose to ignore it. Kagome just opened the box, took out the haori she and her friends had worked so hard on, and tossed the box aside. "Well, it's too late to back out now. Look, we made you a new haori, and it took us ages too. You're going whether you want to or not." Now it was her turn to be on the receiving end of Sesshoumaru's glare. "What? Don't you want to have another chance with Theresa?"

The youkai sighed and wilted a bit, then obediently straightened up, took the haori from Kagome's hands, and slipped into it. He studied one sleeve intently for a moment, running his finger tips over the smooth material and the embroidery decorating it before turning to the others. They were all watching him carefully and nodding their approval of his new look. "I…I guess I'm ready," he finally said.

"Good," Kagome replied, grabbing his hand and heading for the hut door. "Come on, we're wasting time!" Their hasty exit caught the attention of several villagers, but as Kagome was certain they didn't have time to stop and chat, she just ignored them and continued dragging Sesshoumaru towards the well. The trip through said well was uneventful, and their climb out was much easier than usual because Sesshoumaru just jumped out, grabbing her under the arms and taking her with him. It was only then, when they were safely back in modern Tokyo and Kagome was sure that they would have plenty of time to find Theresa, that she took the time to get a really good look at Sesshoumaru. She had to admit, when he had said he felt ready to be sick back in the hut, she thought he had been overreacting. But now, looking at him…she almost felt sorry for coming up with this idea. He really did look ready to pass out. She had never seen him so weak and vulnerable.

"Where is she?" he asked weakly, looking around as though expecting Theresa to materialize from the shadows at any moment.

"Down at the school, I think," Kagome said. She motioned for Sesshoumaru to follow her and began making her way out of the shrine grounds before adding, "She signed up for a shift supervising some of the festival activities there, but her shift is almost over. We might be able to catch her on the way home."

The trip to school was silent and rather tense, with Kagome running through the plan over and over in her head and Sesshoumaru lost in his own deep thoughts. It was on the way to the school that Kagome realized she didn't really _have_ a plan after this, which was a really dumb thing. This had been her idea, the least he could have done was develop a more solid plan so poor Sesshoumaru wouldn't have been reduced to the emotional basket case he was at the moment.

They arrived to find Ayum, Yuka, and Eri huddled by the gate, apparently lost in gossip. Eri noticed their approach first, and turned to stare in open-mouthed awe at Sesshoumaru. "Oh my god, is that…?"

"Yeah," Kagome said. "Where's Theresa?"

"She left a few minutes ago," Ayumi said. Kagome felt her stomach twist, and from the sharp gasp Sesshoumaru let out she imagined that those words had hit him hard too. But then, Ayumi added, "She said she was going to go to the park and sit by the river for a bit before heading home."

"Thanks!" Kagome exclaimed. "Come on, you, I know where she is." And with that, she and Sesshoumaru were once again heading off in search of Theresa.

It wasn't far to the park, and from there not far to the river. The two started a quick walk along the riverside path, eyes trained on the river-watching people in the hopes of picking out the American English teacher. They searched like that for a good fifteen minutes and were just one the verge of giving up completely when, suddenly, they found her. She was standing in a small area mostly closed off by some elegant trees, well-kept shrubs, and flower beds that were right in the middle of their most glorious, bloom-filled stage. They were just close enough to one of the many lamps lighting the path to be able to make out the details of her outfit. It seemed that, at some point, Theresa had acquired a lovely pale-purple kimono, the hem of which was covered by a lovely painted riverside garden to rival the one she stood in. Farther up, a multitude of colorful butterflies flitted their merry way up her body, across her shoulders, and down her flowing sleeves. The edges of a pretty light yellow under-kimono were visible where her main kimono closed in the front, and the whole thing was held together with an understated (and perfect) green and silver obi. Her hair, usually tied back and out of the way in a plain ponytail, had been piled elegantly on top of her head and decorated with a purple-and-white kanzashi, the longest parts of which dangled almost to her shoulder. She seemed blissfully unaware that she was being watched, her dark eyes fixed on the river before her.

Kagome glanced up at Sesshoumaru, who was staring at the vision before him as though he had just discovered the world's most wonderful hidden treasure. She took that as her cue to leave, and, as quietly as she could manage, she slipped into the nearest shadows and crept away. Sesshoumaru didn't notice her go, at first, but when he finally regained his composure a short time later and turned to ask her advice, he was rather unhappy to find that she had gone. _Right then,_ he thought to himself, taking a deep but shaky breath and squaring his shoulders. _I am Sesshoumaru, son of the Inu no Taishou, who has faced down countless threats in battle and vanquished them all. Surely I can handle this._

He stepped off the path and into Theresa's small clearing, walking up to stand beside her. She turned her head slightly, making the flowers in her hair ornament sway and eliciting a pleasant jingling sound from the dangling silver flutters. Her eyes fell first on the white flowers embroidered on his sleeve, then traveled up his arm in an odd replay of the time she had first seen him (it felt so long ago) before coming to rest on his face. Golden eyes met deep brown ones for a long, silent moment, before Sesshoumaru finally had the courage to say anything.

"You're beautiful," he whispered, reaching out and letting his fingers gently brush the dangling flowers of her kanzashi. "And it makes me so sad to think that, when I first met you, I couldn't see it."

She gave him a weak smile. "Are you just saying that now because I'm all dressed up, Sesshoumaru?"

"Hardly…though it is true that you're particularly lovely tonight. I just…there's so much I should have said and never did…"

"You can say it now," she said, her smile growing stronger and her eyes sparkling in the dim light.

Sesshoumaru opened and closed his mouth a few times, then said, "I am not one accustomed to begging or pleading. In the past, I would just take what I wanted without asking any questions, and that got me in trouble. I don't know if I would change anything, though, because otherwise I might not have met you. I should have told you about being a youkai. I should never have run off like I did when you came looking for me. Just…please…can you forgive those things? Can you take me back?"

He wasn't really sure what sort of response he had been expecting, but he didn't think Theresa bursting out laughing was quite it. Sesshoumaru was so taken aback by the strange reaction that he actually took a step away from her, until she reached out and took his hands in hers. "Of course I will, silly," she said. "I was just waiting for you to ask. I'm tired of being the one doing all the chasing, you know."

And then, it was Sesshoumaru's turn to laugh, and he felt far happier than he had in a very long time. He pulled the human woman closer and held her tightly, giving her a tender kiss. When they finally broke apart, Theresa reached up to tap the tip of his nose. "Just remember," she said softly. "Complete honesty from now on, alright?"

"Of course."

"Good." And then, as they shared another kiss, they became completely oblivious to the outside world.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16 -- Epilogue**

The end of July arrived, and with it the chance for Theresa to renew her contract with the school. All things considered, she was shocked they actually wanted to keep her. After all, there had been that whole month where she had disappeared with no warning or explanation, and her teaching record wasn't the greatest (or so she thought). Surely, there had to be someone else out there better suited for the job. But the school seemed to disagree, and the administers spent the last two weeks of July trying to convince her to stay. Too bad Theresa had other plans.

"But what if someone tries to get in touch with you?" Kagome asked, watching Theresa empty the drawers of her office desk and drop the various pens, pencils, loose paper clips, and assorted other office supplies into a small box on the desk. A second box, already filled, sat on her chair.

The former English teacher shrugged. "Well, they won't be able to find me, because I won't be in this world anymore."

Kagome glanced over her shoulder at the office door and gave a little sigh of relief to see that it was indeed still closed. "You're just been telling everyone that you're going back to America though, right?"

"I was going to do that," Theresa replied, closing the now-empty desk drawer and turning her attention to the small filing cabinet, "but I think telling them I've taken a new assignment elsewhere is better. I mean, it's closer to the truth, after all."

Kagome had a brief image of Theresa setting up a little English school in Kaede's village, with Inuyasha, Sesshoumaru, Shippou, Sango, and Miroku as her students, and had to stifle a laugh. "Seriously, though…you're not going to leave any way for people to find you?"

Theresa straightened up and gave Kagome a quizzical look. "People who know me well enough to want to find me when I leave here know that you and I are friends. I suppose, if they want to send me a message that badly, they can ask you to help."

"True." The teenager sighed. "It's going to be boring without you around, Hyland-san."

"Boring? How could things be any more boring than they were with me as your teacher?"

"Oh, we had more fun than you thought. And really, I don't think you did half bad as our teacher."

Theresa finally finished packing the last of her office things away, and Kagome helped her carry the two small boxes out. They would be stored at the Higurashi shrine until Theresa needed them or decided to get rid of them for good. The few items from Theresa's tiny apartment had already been brought to the shrine for safekeeping. They made the trip to the shrine in silence, carrying their boxes carefully (even though there wasn't really anything fragile in them), and finally making the long trek up the stairs to the shrine grounds. Theresa still wasn't completely used to the trip (especially when carrying a box), and was panting by the time she got to the top. Thus, it took her a few minutes to actually notice the person in front of her, who took the box as soon as she made it to the top of the stairs.

"Are you really planning to bring this back with you?" Sesshoumaru asked, delicately poking at the box's contents with one clawed finger.

"Of course not. Most of it would be useless over there," Theresa said, taking the box from him and dropping it on the ground so she could give him a hug. He grinned and kissed her cheek before she pulled away to help Kagome get the last of her boxes situated. And then, far sooner than she had planned, it was time for her to go. Theresa gave her box of office supplies one last pat, then turned and smiled at Kagome.

"Tell Inuyasha and the others that I'll be back soon, will you?" the teenager asked.

"Just as long as you promise to be a bit more regular in your school attendance. You need good grades if you want to get into high school, Kagome," the former English teacher admonished.

"Right. You can try explaining that to Inuyasha, then."

Sesshoumaru snorted. "Don't worry, I'll keep him in line." Kagome gave him a horrified look and he laughed, earning himself a glare from Kagome and an eye roll from Theresa.

"Come on, you," Theresa said, tucking her small hand into his and turning towards the well house. "I'm hungry, and Kaede said she'd have dinner waiting for me."

"Of course," the inu-daiyoukai replied. He was content to follow his human love to the well house, but as soon as they made it down the small staircase and were standing beside the well, he swept her up in his arms before gracefully leaping into the well. Theresa's last view of modern Japan was Kagome, standing in the well house door, waving as the couple disappeared into the blue light of time-travel.

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"All things considered, that went much better than I thought it would," Hoshiyomi said as Kagome closed the well house door after watching Sesshoumaru and Theresa disappear into the well.

"You know, I was all set to be dealing with his human form for a couple hundred years at least," Tsukuyomaru added.

Menoumaru tapped his chin. "But would he really have lived that long? Human lives are short, you know." Beside him, his father nodded in agreement.

"Well, it doesn't matter now," Inu no Taishou said, a proud grin plastered across his face as he stared at the silent well. "I suppose showing up at Kaede's hut tonight and telling Sesshoumaru that he's turning out a lot like me would be pushing my luck, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, yes it would," Tsukuyomaru said. As the two ghostly moth youkai nodded in perfect unison (this time distracting Hoshiyomi with the motion of their antennae), their companion added, "In fact, I wouldn't put it past Sesshoumaru to find a way to kill you all over again for a comment like that."

"Hmm, yes, I think I'll skip that then," Inu no Taishou said. As his companions chatted happily behind him and slowly began fading out of the world of the living, Sesshoumaru's father hung around for one more moment, eyes fixed on the well that had, in a strange twist of fate, provided the means for his son's salvation, and allowed himself a small smile. Finally, Sesshoumaru had come to understand. And for that, Inu no Taishou was very grateful indeed.

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**And with that, it's over!** But man, was it ever a fun ride. I want to thank all of you who read this (especially my reviewers!) -- you set some personal records for me. There may or may not be a sequel, depends on demand, my level of inspiration, and how the other fic I'm working on at the moment goes, but we shall see. Again, thank you all. I hope to share another story with you soon! 


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